Terms of Engagement

by Kylie Brant

  And to plan how she was going to slip away from all the attention and get out of town, without leaving a trace.

  “You okay?”

  The husky timbre of his voice, the note that hadn’t been there when he’d addressed Dora, added another degree of weakness to her muscles. “I’m fine.”

  He accepted the lie for what it was and lifted his head to look around the area. “I can’t say that I share Ms. Jenkins’s opinion, though. Unusual for a burglar to come armed, in daylight. Especially unusual to fire, other than in self-defense. It’s not like we were a threat. Never even saw the bastard before the shooting began.”

  She gripped the mug almost tightly enough to crush the pottery and strove for an even tone. “I’ve been thinking that it might have something to do with the restaurant shooting. Maybe Mitch had a brother, or family members upset about the way it ended.”

  “And decided to take it out on you?”

  It sounded thin, even to her own ears, but it was the best she could come up with, given the fact her focus was splintered into a thousand fragments. “Some of the witnesses at Piper’s got the idea I was cooperating with Mitch. And he wasn’t exactly singing my praises before you…before he…” He’d spent his last moments, she recalled now, her stomach sinking even further, cursing her fluently and imaginatively. She could have told him he was wasting his breath. She’d been living under a curse for the last several years.

  “It’s a thought.” His voice was mild. Which should have warned her. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a clear plastic evidence bag. “Doesn’t explain this, though.”

  He held the shell between thumb and forefinger and Lindsay stared dumbly at it. Read the engraving on the side. The engraving she’d known would be there.

  “Any idea who ‘Gracie’ is?”

  It was like staring into the headlights of an oncoming train. Knowing it was bearing down on her didn’t lessen the impact. She couldn’t respond. The simple act of drawing breath into her lungs was beyond her. Panic careened through her system, sprinted up her spine.

  Somehow, she managed to shake her head. But she couldn’t manage words. Not yet.

  The last time she’d seen that shell, or its twin, she’d had Niko’s hand wrapped around her throat.

  See this? If you don’t tell me where it is, this one has your name on it. Are you listening to me, Gracie?

  She’d listened. And she’d managed, somehow, to convince him of her ignorance. Until she had the chance to get away. And kept running so the bullet encased in that shell wouldn’t find its mark.

  Caught in the past, her lungs ached for oxygen. She released the pent-up breath in a long rush, one hand going unconsciously to her throat.

  “Somehow I thought you’d say that.” He hooked a hand under one of her arms and hauled her to her feet, not ungently. “C’mon.” He picked up her bag with his free hand.

  She clung to the railing. “Where?”

  “Downtown. You need to give a statement about what happened today, and then you’re going to start answering a few questions. With the truth, preferably.” His arm around her shoulders was much-needed support, but it also served to move her forward. “Although it doesn’t seem as though you and truth are on a first-name basis.”

  That shot her spine with steel, for all the good it did her. He was still forcing her rapidly toward his car, and after a quick look around, she admitted that she couldn’t stay here, anyway. Nor could she come back. Niko knew where she lived. That fact pounded in her brain. He could be somewhere around right now. Watching. Waiting.

  Her throat went dry at the thought, and she forced herself to focus. To think. Right now, the police station was the safest place she could be. The problems would start when she left there. She just needed time to figure how to get out of town later without Niko following.

  It wasn’t until she was seated in the front seat of his unmarked car that the realization hit her, leaving a cold trail of fear in its wake.

  Even if she managed to leave Niko behind, Jack would still be here. And if Rassi thought Jack had a clue to her whereabouts, Jack was as good as dead.

  Nausea churned in her stomach, and she leaned forward, hauled in some air. Niko would go after Jack only if he discovered they had a relationship, she assured herself. There was no way for him to find that out, was there? But there was still Jolie. And Dace. If Niko stuck around long enough to learn what he could about Lindsay’s life here, he was bound to learn of those relationships. And he’d be ruthless about using the knowledge to discover Lindsay’s whereabouts.

  Tears stung her eyes at the thought. Ties always brought complications. Hadn’t she learned that over the years? They drew innocent parties into Niko’s path. People who would still be alive if it weren’t for their connection with her.

  Jack opened the door, slid into the car. His voice was gruff. Grudging. “Are you okay?”

  “There’s no good end to this. Just drive me to the interstate. I’ll get a lift. And all this will go away.” She lifted her head, looked at him then. Saw her answer in his expression and nearly wept. “Stop thinking like a cop for one minute, that’s all I ask. You can’t fix this. You can’t change it. And I’m sorrier than you could possibly imagine for getting you mixed up in it.”

  A stillness had come over Jack. His expression gave nothing away, but the intensity of his focus was unnerving. “Does ‘it’ have a name?”

  Niko’s name was on her lips, trembled there. And then in a flash of déjà vu, she was in New York City again, listening to her friends tell her what they’d discovered about Niko. What they’d shared with Detective Vickers. And forty-eight hours later she’d begun identifying her friends as they showed up in the morgue. One by one.

  Fear froze her inclination to open up. Instead she swallowed hard and reached for enough to appease him. “I can’t tell you that. Only that he buys and sells people, including police. He must have seen the newscast,” she said bleakly, eyes staring blankly out the window. “He must have recognized me and tracked me down. I didn’t get out soon enough. Now you and Dace and Jolie might be in danger because of me, and I…” Her voice hitched and she stopped, lips flattening as she summoned control. When she’d won the battle for it, she continued. “I promised myself I was never going to let that happen again.”

  There was a long silence but she could almost hear Jack mentally piecing together what she’d said. What she didn’t say. Funny how she could predict his thought processes on the basis of their short acquaintance. And the realization that accompanied that knowing filled her with a sense of fatalism.

  “Look at me.” When she failed to do so, Jack reached out and tipped her face toward his with one finger beneath her chin. “I recognize the guy’s a threat. And I don’t doubt he’s given you plenty of reason to fear him. But he isn’t invincible. You have to trust me.” When she tried to shake her head, he forestalled her protest. “You have to, Lindsay.” Their gazes did battle for long moments. “Whoever this guy is, he nearly killed you today. Nearly killed both of us. How long have you been running? Six months? A year?”

  Something on her face must have alerted him because he stopped, shock flickering in his expression. “Years, then.” His hand dropped away from her face to curl in a ball in his lap. “A guy like that has a pretty powerful motivation. And I’m not underestimating the bastard. But you’re underestimating me if you think for a second I’m going to let you run off to take your chances with him.”

  His movements as he started the car, put it in gear, were carefully controlled. Restraint layered over violence. And his implacable tone dashed any forlorn hope she held that he was going to help her make an escape. “There are other ways. There are programs—”

  Lindsay gave a bitter laugh, her head leaning on the leather headrest. “You mean like Witness Protection? Where I take my chances that no one inside gets greedy and sells my information to the wrong person? I like my chances better on my own.”

  “You’re short
on trust. I get that. But sometimes it comes down to the devil you know. So you’d better think about doling out more of that story, Lindsay. Because if you think I’m letting you deal with this guy alone, Mitch’s bullet did more damage to your head than I thought.”

  He’d lost control for a moment, and the situation had gone to hell.

  Niko kept his binoculars trained on the scene in front of Gracie’s place. From his hiding place under the large pine, he had an excellent vantage point from which to keep track of the cops’ movements. And her location.

  It was her fault, of course. Seeing her again, in the flesh, not just those seconds frozen by the camera, had rocked him more than he’d believed possible. Little, innocent Grace Feller. Even knowing what a lying, traitorous bitch she was hadn’t stopped that surge of pure lust when he’d seen her again.

  He wasn’t finished with her. That’s all it was. And seeing that guy go inside with her, stay long enough to leave no doubt as to what they were doing in there, okay, maybe that had messed up his thinking.

  He’d almost capped the guy when he’d come out. Actually had started to squeeze the trigger, imagining his brains spattered all over the side of that garage. But he’d held back, hadn’t he? Held off knowing that once the guy was gone, he’d have Gracie to himself. And then they’d have a long conversation about her leaving New York without his permission, taking something that belonged to him.

  Rage was fogging his vision and he lowered the binoculars for a moment. He needed her alive long enough to tell him where she’d put it. Long enough for him to show her why it didn’t pay to run out on Niko Rassi.

  Yeah, and maybe just long enough for him to get another taste of her. All that white skin and those mile-long legs. Just a taste to prove to himself that she was out of his system before he killed her.

  But the guy—the cop—hadn’t left. And seeing them together, the way she let the pig put his hands on her…it would have served the whore right to take a bullet in the brain then and there. She was his. Would be until he said otherwise.

  And when he did, his Magnum would do the talking.

  The fury was still ripe enough to choke him, but he shoved it down. Let it work for him. He’d missed a shell, but it couldn’t be helped. He’d had to get out of there fast when that cop had come for him. And it pleased him that Gracie had seen it—and would know what it meant.

  Raising the binoculars again, he trained them on the couple in the unmarked car. What was she telling him? Was she spilling her guts about New York? About him?

  No, he decided after a moment. She was too scared for that. The bitch had never been stupid. She’d do what she’d done back then—lie and flutter those cat-green eyes of hers and then run first chance she got.

  But he wasn’t going to waste time chasing her up and down the coast. He had a business to run. And it didn’t pay to be absent too long. Paulo Portino was a suspicious and impatient man.

  So this ended, here, in this godforsaken city. Niko started to wiggle free of his hiding place beneath the low-hanging fir branches. He had to think through the details, but he knew exactly what would keep Gracie from running again.

  He smiled, thinking of how it would play out. He’d get everything he wanted from her, and when he was finished there’d be once last shell with her name on it.

  And this one wouldn’t be wasted.

  “Because she’s lying, Captain.” Jack paced Telsom’s office, his frustration evident in his long strides. “She’s running from someone and now he’s found her. Those bullets were meant for her and all the denials in the world aren’t going to convince me otherwise.”

  Jack might have been pissed, but he stopped short of telling Telsom everything: that Lindsay Bradford’s ID was as shallow as the reflecting pond in Monument Park. He couldn’t even say what was stopping him. He wanted to dig deeper into her secrets himself before he bared them to the world.

  “Doesn’t matter what she told you one-on-one,” Telsom said implacably. “If her statement says she has no idea who might have shot at her, we are done with her. Kick her loose.” He frowned, and Jack’s instincts went on full red alert. “Unless…You aren’t involved with her, are you?”

  Damn, that question was becoming too familiar. And since it depended on how the captain defined involved, Jack gave him his best blank stare. “I told you, I happened by the hospital, her friend asked me to give her a ride home. End of story.”

  Telsom rubbed at the back of his neck. “People lie to us all the time. That’s nothing new.”

  “Because she’s scared.” And he made damn sure that none of the emotion he was feeling sounded in his words. “Scared enough to run, and she’s still a material witness in the Engels incident.”

  “Engels is dead, so it isn’t as though we need her testimony.” But Telsom was listening now. His black swivel chair creaked as he leaned back in it. “I can’t give you any manpower on this, but if you want to keep an eye on her, that’s on you. Give us time for ballistics to come back on the bullets recovered from today’s scene, and maybe we’ll get a little more information to confront her with. Just watch your step, Langley. The last thing we need is for her to start screaming police harassment, especially with the press ready to hang a medal on her for the restaurant incident.”

  Jack gave a curt nod and headed out the door. It wouldn’t do for the captain to start inquiring any more closely about his relationship with Lindsay. Or maybe he should start thinking of her as Gracie.

  He headed back to the interview room, his mood grim. Okay, so he’d known she had mysteries tucked away. That had been clear almost from the start. So maybe it shouldn’t feel like such a punch in the gut that she refused to share them—all of them—after her past had made a head-on collision with her present this afternoon.

  Chapter 8

  Grace Feller, aka Sara Schmidt, aka Lori Altman, aka Cassie Richards, aka Lindsay Bradford, sat in the front seat of Jack’s car with one hand braced on the dashboard and the other clutching the door handle. She still swayed from side to side every time Jack made an unsignaled turn.

  Twisting in her seat as much as the seat belt would allow, she peered behind them. If Niko had managed to follow them from the police station, Jack’s defensive driving would throw him off their trail.

  Facing forward again, she noted Jack checking the rearview mirror. “Do we have a tail?”

  “Not that I can see. But if he is back there, I’ll make sure we lose him before heading home.”

  Home. The word sent a funny pang through her stomach. She’d readied herself for an argument when he’d rejoined her in the interview room. It had been pretty evident when he’d left that he’d been on the verge of strangling her. But he’d regained control before re-entering the room, surprising her with his matter-of-fact logic: if the shooter had followed them there, how did she expect to lose him on her own?

  That question had been gnawing a hole inside her for the last hour. And because his suggestion made more sense than any idea she’d come up with, she’d reluctantly agreed to accompany him to his house, trusting Jack to shake any possible tail along the way.

  Leaving town could be accomplished just as easily from Jack’s place as from the police station. Waiting until he was asleep to sneak away would be low—her stomach roiled at the thought—but holing up at his place for long and chancing Niko tracking her there was far worse. She couldn’t take the risk of Jack becoming collateral damage. Her conscience wouldn’t withstand the burden of yet another life weighing on it.

  A thought occurred then, had panic flaring. “How do you know he didn’t plant a GPS locator on your car? He wouldn’t have to follow closely then. He could hang back and track the car from a distance.”

  Jack slanted her a look. “Because he’d have to be pretty damn gutsy to plant a device on the car in the police station lot.” He flipped on the revolving dash light and slowed at the next intersection, checking for traffic before running the red light.

  It was s
everal minutes before he spoke again. When he did, his tone was careful. “Fear can have a funny effect on our memories. It isn’t unusual for victims to magnify their abuser’s power over time, for instance. Whoever this guy is, Lindsay, whatever he’s done, he’s still just a man. He doesn’t have superhuman capabilities.”

  She fought to suppress the wild laugh that rose to her throat. “You have no idea what he’s capable of.”

  “Then tell me.” All the frustration she’d sensed from him in the last few hours was pent up in the words. “I can’t help if you won’t tell me the whole story.”

  Her vision blurred. Stress and worry, she told herself, and willed her eyes to clear again. They’d covered and recovered this ground a hundred different ways and they’d never agree.

  “You’re partially right,” she murmured, her voice aching. “You can’t help me.”

  An hour later, Lindsay wandered around Jack’s town house, more curious than she would have liked to admit. She’d expected the glass and chrome, sleek lines and leather furniture. And certainly the big-screen TV was no shock, as men of all ages these days seemed to think they couldn’t watch sports if the players didn’t appear life-size on their screens.

  But she hadn’t expected the small, decorated Christmas tree that was tucked into one corner of the living room, several gaily wrapped packages beneath it. And the well-equipped kitchen was a surprise, with its black appliances and huge center countertop. A counter that looked well used, from the looks of the cutlery sitting on its surface and the pans hanging above it. The row of herbs growing on his windowsill had her shooting him an amazed look.

  He lifted a shoulder. “I like to eat. Learning to cook was sort of self-defense.” He hefted her bag, which he’d carried in from the car, and walked upstairs with it. Her nerves jittered at the sight, but she firmly calmed them. One step at a time. They’d given Niko the slip. Even she didn’t believe anyone could have managed to follow them through the feints and turns and double-backs Jack had managed. Once he’d garaged his car, he’d humored her and thoroughly searched it and found no GPS device. So she’d take this opportunity to catch her breath.