by Karen Leabo
Marissa opened her mouth, then clamped it closed before finally coming up with a retort. “He didn’t actually own it, you know,” she said, her chin jutting out defensively. “On paper he did. But it really belongs to his friend, Eddie Constantine. Eddie’s going through a divorce, and his wife is grabbing up assets as fast as she can, so Eddie talked Jimmy into being the front man for the Foxhunt so the lawyers wouldn’t be able to take it away.”
Interesting, Clint thought. This was something he hadn’t known about. “Whether he owns it or not, he’s sure as hell there every night, glad-handing, passing out free drinks to his best customers. I hear he particularly likes interviewing potential employees, if you get my drift. In fact, I think his current wife used to work for him.”
“Who, Sophia?” Marissa’s momentary confusion was replaced with sudden anger. “Oh, just stop it. You aren’t going to convince me Jimmy is something he’s not by telling a bunch of lies. Anyway, even if you believe what you’re saying, even if you believe he’s slime, are you any better? You’re just another one of them, resorting to violence to get what you want.”
“Hey, you’re the one who tried to shoot me! It wasn’t my idea to involve guns.”
“I wasn’t trying,” she muttered. “I missed on purpose. Anyway, I suppose I’m no better than you, although at least I can claim self-defense.”
Now Clint was the one at a loss for words. She was right. No matter how many times he kept telling himself that he was doing this for all the right reasons, he was behaving in a reprehensible fashion. If Marissa were his sister and someone did this to her—scared her to pieces, manhandled her, almost drowned her—he’d beat them to a pulp.
But Marissa wasn’t his sister. In fact, he was feeling distinctly unbrotherly things toward her. Rather than use her as a pawn in his deadly game, he wanted to protect her. But how could you protect someone who’d been born into such a family? Daughter of Lido Gabriole and sister to Jimmy the Gab. Her own parents had been brutally murdered. There was little she could do to keep crime totally out of her life, even if she wanted to.
“You should move away,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Never mind. Rusty’s not responding. I think we better get him to a hospital.” He went into the bathroom one more time. Marissa’s clothes were still damp, but they would have to do. He came out and tossed them to her. “Put these on. I’ll call nine-one-one, and then you and I will hightail it out of here before the ambulance arrives.” Funny, but only a few minutes earlier he’d contemplated this exact plan of action, except that Marissa had been the one in need of medical care, and he’d visualized fleeing the scene with Rusty.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” She rattled the handcuffs.
“Right.” Feeling a now-familiar tightness in his gut at having to go near her, he freed Marissa, though he intended to keep a close eye on her. He watched with disguised interest as she pulled the red T-shirt over her head, then shimmied into pink panties and the paisley boxer shorts, all without removing the towel until the very end. Damn, she was a looker, even in that crazy outfit.
He dialed 911, then left the phone off the hook without speaking to the operator. They’d trace the call and send someone. “Okay, let’s go.”
Subdued now, she went with him obediently, stepping gingerly in her bare feet through the debris that had once been their motel room door. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to borrow a car.”
“Steal a car? Why am I not surprised? Last night you stole one boat and sank another one. A car should be no problem.”
“It isn’t.” He’d already picked it out—a four-year-old Oldsmobile, sitting in the motel parking lot with the keys in the ignition. What was another five to ten years for auto theft added to his sentence? What mattered was that a few minutes before, Jimmy Gabriole had told him that Rachelle was alive. In a matter of hours, they would talk again and arrange for a transfer of hostages.
It was a few minutes later before Marissa felt she could even talk. What kind of person was she? She was beginning to wonder. She’d severely injured one man and almost shot another. Granted, in attacking Rusty she’d been trying to save Clint’s life, but still.
“You don’t seem to believe what I said before—that Rusty was going to kill you.”
“It was a nice try, darlin’, but no, I don’t.”
She really didn’t blame him. Why would she have saved his life one minute, only to shoot at him the next? He had no way of knowing that her miss had been deliberate, intended to scare him. Even with her left hand, she could hit a six-foot-something man from eight feet away. Who couldn’t?
“How do you explain the presence of the gun?” she asked. “It was stashed away and unloaded when you left.”
“Rusty’s a nut. He was probably pulling some macho number on you.”
“And the gag? How did I remove it without Rusty’s help?”
That one apparently stumped him.
“Clint, listen to me. You’re being set up. Rusty didn’t tell me everything—he assumed I knew some things, that I’m in cahoots with Eddie simply because I’m Jimmy’s sister. But I got the gist of it. You’re involved in some FBI investigation, and you’re getting too close to Eddie. Rachelle is a coke addict, and she’ll do anything for a snort, even set you up to be killed.”
She wasn’t getting through to him, she could tell. And if she didn’t, he might get them both killed.
“Listen to me!” she said again, hitting him in the arm.
“Ouch. Stop that.”
“Well, listen, then. Remember when you were trying to fix the boat propeller, and you lost your grip? Do you remember that I was the one who threw you the rope? Rusty wasn’t making any attempt to help you. He was going to let you drown. He told me that.”
Clint glanced over at her. He didn’t appear quite as sure of himself, but he said nothing.
“Clint, please, don’t you get it? Eddie knew Rachelle was an informant. He paid her, or gave her drugs, to pull a number on you, to ‘flush you out,’ in Rusty’s words.”
“That can’t be true,” Clint said. “Rusty doesn’t work for Eddie.”
“Not yet, but he’d sure like to. He thought that killing you would be his ticket in.”
Suddenly Clint pulled the car over to the shoulder and stopped. He turned and stared at Marissa, his face a reflection of his horror. “You aren’t kidding about this.”
Finally. He was going to believe her. She shook her head. “Much as I hate what you’ve done to me, I don’t want you killed. I don’t want anyone killed. God, what if Rusty dies and it’s my fault?”
“Rusty isn’t going to die. His vital signs were good—he just had a bump on the head. Now, I want you to tell me exactly what he told you, word for word, as nearly as you can remember.”
Marissa went through her conversation with Rusty again. And then a second time. By the third recap, she could tell that Clint really did believe her. She could also see that he was deeply hurt by the possibility of Rachelle’s betrayal.
“I still don’t believe Rachelle could do this to me,” he said, shaking his head. “We had our differences, we were married only a short time and our marriage was a disaster from start to finish, but there was some genuine fondness there. She saved my life once. She stepped in front of me and took a bullet. It almost killed her. How could she turn around and …?” He couldn’t even put it into words.
“Drugs,” Marissa said. “She’s an addict, according to Rusty.”
Clint sighed deeply. “I’ve put her through detox more times than I can count. I thought she was gonna make it this time, although, in her profession, I guess she can’t get away from it.”
“Her profession? Your ex-wife is a …”
“Yeah. I married a stripper. Strange choice for an FBI agent, huh?”
To say the least. Marissa was having a hard time imagining it. Clint seemed so … straight, despite his recent crime spree. While he st
ared out the windshield, his mind no doubt a million miles away, she studied him. Square jaw, short, almost military-length hair—though a little longer on top, she noticed. Eyes a pale shade of blue—no they were gray, she decided. True gray. She’d never seen eyes that shade.
He was handsome in a tough-guy way, especially with that day’s growth of beard. Her heart fluttered inside her chest. Did kidnap victims really fall in love with their captors? Was she turning into a modern-day Patty Hearst? Because, despite all that had happened, despite being kidnapped and hijacked and handcuffed by this man, she felt an almost irresistible urge to reach over and touch him. It was the pain she saw, so palpable she could feel it in her own gut, that made her want to give comfort.
She forced herself to resist. This situation was complicated enough.
Suddenly he looked at Marissa. “So what’s Jimmy’s role in all this?”
She closed her eyes, feeling her own wave of pain. That was the million-dollar question. “I don’t know. I’d like to believe he’s just a pawn, but—”
“ ‘But’ is right. He’s in up to his eyeballs.”
“He wouldn’t condone murder,” she said with absolute certainty.
“A few minutes ago, you were convinced he couldn’t own a strip club. But he does. I’ve seen him there with my own eyes. And his wife, Sophia, used to be a dancer. I know that for a fact.”
Marissa sighed. “I can believe the strip club part. It’s tough, but I can see it. But not murder. Anyway, if he was part of this conspiracy, wouldn’t he have offered a bit more cooperation the first time you called?”
“Hmm, you have a point.” He eased the car back into traffic on the two-lane blacktop.
“Isn’t it possible that Eddie Constantine is setting up Jimmy too?” Marissa asked. “He had no way of knowing how you would react when you realized Rachelle was missing. What if you’d gone through proper channels instead of pulling the crazy stunt you did? Eddie wouldn’t want his name connected to a missing person case. So Rachelle dropped hints that Jimmy was after her, that she was afraid of him, not Eddie.”
“Okay, that’s one theory,” Clint said. “If you like it better than mine, we’ll go with it. For now.”
“You mean the ‘up-to-his-eyeballs’ theory? Yeah, I like it better.” Suddenly she was incredibly tired. She tipped her seat back and closed her eyes. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“We were heading for an FBI safe house in Pearland, but now I’m not so sure.” His voice reflected bone weariness.
“You mean, the FBI’s in on this kidnapping thing you did?” she asked.
“No. I’m on my own. I just know this one particular house is hardly ever used. It’s kind of a dive. But I was thinking.… Hell, I oughtta let you go. Drop you near a pay phone. This operation was a bad idea from the very beginning. You know, I did go through the proper channels. And nobody gave a flip. My boss said that to go after Rachelle now would jeopardize the whole investigation.” His knuckles whitened against the steering wheel. “He said she was nothing but a junkie stripper anyway, not worth the bother.”
“Well, of course she’s worth the bother,” Marissa said hotly. “She’s a human being, no matter what she’s done wrong. And I’m sure you still care about her, the way I care about Jimmy no matter what he’s gone and gotten himself mixed up in.”
Clint said nothing. He simply kept driving.
“You’ll really let me go?” she asked in a small voice.
“Yeah. Hell, I’m sorry, Marissa. For involving you, for almost getting you killed, for leaving you alone with Rusty so you ended up having to defend yourself against him—”
“I was defending you, not myself,” she said succinctly. “Or don’t you believe me still?”
He nodded. “I believe you. I guess I should thank you for saving my life.”
“Twice,” she reminded him. “I threw you the rope.”
“And then you tried to shoot off my kneecaps.”
“I told you, I missed on purpose.”
“Yeah, with the gun in your left hand, shaking like a leaf. Do you have any idea what a ridiculous picture you made, half leaning, half sitting with one hand cuffed to the bed, the other holding that gun, that towel wrapped around you and about to fall off.…” His voice trailed off, and he went silent.
Marissa couldn’t think of anything to say. Abruptly she changed the subject. “So, you talked to Jimmy?”
“Yeah. He said a friend of his knew something about Rachelle, and that he was willing to trade her for you. I’m supposed to call back at noon to find out how and where to make the trade.”
“You see?” she said excitedly. “I’ll bet they pick some deserted alley or pier. And they’ll kill you.”
“That’s not going to be a happening thing. If Rachelle wasn’t really kidnapped, there isn’t much point in negotiating further.” He paused, then asked, “Where do you want to be let off? I have three-quarters of a tank of gas. I’ll take you anywhere in Houston you want to go.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him her home address. She would give anything to crawl into her own comfortable bed right then. She thought, Am I crazy? Tell this deranged man where I live? But she realized she wasn’t afraid of Clint anymore.
He was really going to release her. Perversely, she wasn’t quite ready to say good-bye. A crazy idea was forming in her brain. “Why don’t we go to that safe house you mentioned?” she suggested. “We can talk, maybe get some sleep. Then, I’ve got a proposition for you.”
SIX
Clint thought he was having an audio hallucination. “I said I’m letting you go. You’re free. Don’t you want to call the cops or something?”
“Maybe. Eventually. But I have an idea. I think you and I can help each other out—I can help with your investigation, and you …” She paused, looking pensive. “But I won’t know for sure until I get some sleep and can think clearly again. So let’s go to this safe house. Does it have beds?”
“Hell, yeah, it has beds,” Clint said, stepping on the accelerator. He forced himself to slow down when he realized he was speeding. The last thing he needed right then was to be pulled over in a hot car. But he was feeling hopeful again. Apparently Marissa wasn’t hell-bent on having him arrested, at least not yet. Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t end up in the pen after all.
Before heading for the safe house, Clint decided to ditch the Olds and pick up his own wheels. His apartment was more or less on the way to the safe house. Marissa dozed in the passenger seat during the twenty-minute drive. He caught himself looking over at her as often as he could without driving off the road, wondering what in hell she had in mind. Why hadn’t she left him when she had the chance? After everything he’d done.…
He parked in a convenience store lot close to his apartment complex just south of Hobby Airport. Marissa stirred.
“We’re just changing cars, sweetheart,” he said. When he realized the endearment had slipped out, he had to wonder where his own head was at. “Um, you’re sure you don’t want to …” He gestured. “I can handle this thing on my own, you know. It’s not the first time someone has wanted me dead.”
“Typical male,” she grumbled as she opened her door. “The Lone Ranger, always has to take care of things on his own. I’m not crazy about this situation. But now that I’ve gotten dragged into it, I don’t feel right about walking away—not if I can help you put some slime behind bars. What are you doing?”
“Wiping off fingerprints.” He was using a tissue to clean every surface either one of them had touched—mirrors, seat belts, steering wheel. “I’m hoping if I leave the keys in it, someone else will steal it, and I’ll be off the hook.”
“Oh.” Marissa grabbed another tissue from the travel box on the dash and began helping him. “You did say we’re changing cars.”
“My apartment’s right around the corner.” But he wanted to return to the former subject. “You want to help me put slime behind bars. So your angle in this is to do
your part for society?”
“That’s part of it, I guess. Look, I’m too tired to think this through right now. Don’t go asking me hard questions, okay?”
He shrugged. “Okay.” Truthfully, he was glad she was sticking around. He would miss her when she took off, despite her acerbic tongue. “You could be in danger, too, you know. If someone’s after me, you could end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I already was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she reminded him. “It couldn’t get much worse than what I’ve already been through.”
Clint didn’t have a reply to that. Yeah, so he was scum. The plan had seemed sensible at the time.
They both got out of the Olds and started walking. Clint knew the rough blacktop couldn’t feel good on Marissa’s bare feet, but she didn’t complain.
They cut down an alley and into a parking lot. His old 240Z was parked in a carport behind his generic-looking apartment building. He’d bought the Z the previous year and had been working nights and weekends ever since to return it to its former glory. Few people at the Bureau had even seen it; no one would think to look for it.
“Wow,” Marissa said through a yawn. “Cool car.”
“Thanks.” Like a high-school hotshot, he took irrational pride in her compliment.
Back on the road, they were silent for a long time. Then Clint felt an odd urge to make small talk. He’d made all kinds of incorrect assumptions about Marissa Gabriole already. He wanted to know more about her. “So, you’re an accountant? Do you have your own practice?”
Marissa didn’t answer. When he looked over at her, he realized she was asleep once more. No wonder, if she felt anywhere near as beat as he did. Sometimes, he just couldn’t compensate for the fact that he was forty.
Thirty minutes later, they were pulling into the gravel driveway of an old white farmhouse in Pearland. Housing tracts had sprouted all around, but this house, and the twenty acres surrounding it, had resisted development. Actually, it was up for sale now. The Bureau had decided that, after fifteen years, it had outlived its usefulness as a safe house. Too many people knew about it, and too many neighbors had moved too close.
