The 14th... And Forever

by Merline Lovelace

  Lowrey gave her a tight, disgruntled look. “What’s not to like?”

  “I don’t like being locked up,” she shot back. “I don’t like being without wheels, and I don’t like staying someplace where snitches have been known to camp out. How long do you think it would take for our location to leak?”

  “We haven’t lost one of our stoolies in years,” Lowrey tossed back, offended.

  “Right!”

  “This is your turf,” Jack interjected. “You pick the spot you’ll feel safest.”

  Angela thought for less than two seconds. Then she strode across the room and stopped in front of the wide-eyed dispatcher.

  “We need a car, Gus. Not a limo. Something dark and fast.”

  “A car? Sure, sure, take my Chevy. It’s parked right outside the door.” He dug in his pocket and dropped the keys into her palm. “But...but what’s going on here, Angela?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She started for the door.

  Gus hurried alongside her. “But...what’s the story on the limo?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But... what are we gonna tell your mother?”

  She groaned. “I don’t know!”

  “Call her,” Gus begged as she walked out the door. “You call her, Angela! Please! Before she calls here!”

  She stepped out into a cold, clear night marred by the stench of burning rubber and the crackle of radios from the police and fire department vehicles on the scene.

  “Is this Gus’s car?” Jack asked. She tore her eyes from the remains of the Chrysler, still smoldering in the distance. With a mental shake, she reached for the door handle of the dark green ’Chevy.

  “Yes.”

  Ed Winters turned up his coat collar against the cold. “Hang loose, Angie. I’ll get a couple of the cruisers to ride shotgun for you. I want to make sure you’re not followed.”

  For the first time since the Chrysler went up in flames, Angela smiled. “No one’s going to follow me, Eddie. Not for long, anyway. Gus has a mobile phone in his car. If I need help, I’ll call for the cavalry.”

  No one followed them.

  Gus’s Chevy handled like a dream, which wasn’t surprising, since Tony had rebuilt the engine just last year. Cutting corners like a knife, it sped through the streets with a silent tread.

  Angela kept one eye on the rearview mirror, both hands on the wheel, and her foot just heavy enough on the gas not to call attention to their swift passage. They’d traveled through the dark, sleeping city and were heading east on Highway 50 before Jack asked the obvious question.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My uncle has a cabin on Maryland’s western shore. It’s not much more than a crab shanty, but it’s well off the beaten track, and it’s safe.”

  “Does it have a telephone? I don’t want to rely on this mobile phone if someone’s scanning the airwaves for us.”

  She nodded. “There’s a phone.”

  “And a bed?”

  Her pointed silence lasted for two blocks.

  “It’s after three,” Jack said with exaggerated patience. “I’ve been up since five this morning. Yesterday morning. You’ve probably been up as long, if not longer. We need someplace safe to talk through what’s happened today. We need to make some calls. Then we both need sleep. Does this crab shanty have a bed?”

  “It has a bed. More or less.”

  Forty minutes later, Jack stepped out of the Chevy and swept the cottage perched precariously above the Chesapeake with a narrow, searching gaze. Only the rush of the wind through the trees and the slap of the bay against the bank disturbed the dark silence.

  Angela groped under a loose shutter for the key, then pushed inside and fumbled for the light switch. A single overhead bulb illuminated a one-room cabin, which was filled with a comfortable clutter of old magazines, red buoys and wooden decoys in various stages of carving and scattered magazines. Half the main room served as a kitchen, the other half as the bedroom-sitting area. An open door in the far wall showed a glimpse of a tiny bathroom.

  With a brisk competence, Angela soon had the cabin’s gasoline heater going. Within minutes, the interior lost its musty dampness and the room grew warm enough for her to shed her borrowed football jacket and wool tunic.

  Jack’s breath caught right below his belt buckle at his first glimpse of the woman beneath the smartly tailored tunic. A thin black sweater clung to her slender, long-waisted figure. Her skirt fit smoothly over gently rounded hips. With her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders, her makeup long since worn off and faint smudges darkening the skin under her eyes, she looked tired, and more vulnerable than Jack had yet seen her.

  Once again the need to take her in his arms and shelter her hammered at him. She was so independent, despite her extended family. So indomitable, despite the hair-raising events she’d gone through today. Jack couldn’t remember ever meeting anyone with her combination of guts and beguiling, tantalizing appeal.

  When this was over, he promised himself, he’d explore the irresistable combination in greater, more intimate detail.

  He tossed his suit coat over one of the rickety ladderback chairs pulled up to the small pine table in the center of the room. His suit was considerably worse for the wear after two dive-bomb contacts with the asphalt. With a gust of relief, he dragged off his tie, undid the top few shirt buttons and rolled up the sleeves.

  He turned to find Angela removing a stack of magazines from a shelflike platform built into the wall.

  “Is that the bed?”

  “This is the bed. You can have it, and I’ll take the chair.” She jerked her chin toward an overstuffed armchair piled high with fishing paraphernalia and more magazines.

  “I’ll take the chair.”

  “I’ve curled up in it plenty of times,” she replied with a shrug, “but I’m too tired to argue. There are some blankets in those closets. If you root around, you’ll probably find several bottles of Strega and some glasses.”

  Jack didn’t have to root around. He found four dusty bottles of the potent straw-colored liqueur on the top shelf of the first cabinet, right next to an assortment of dime-store water glasses. The second closet, he noted, held a neat row of bottles containing chemicals that hadn’t been purchased in any dime store. Setting the Strega and two glasses on the table, he continued his search for the blankets.

  “I take it this is Uncle Guido’s cabin,” he commented as he carried his finds across the room.

  “How did you know?”

  “Do you have any other friends or relatives who keep a supply of acetone and offset ink handy?”

  She bit her lower lip. “No.”

  “I thought he was retired.”

  “He is! He just prints fliers for bingo night at Saint Ignacio’s. Mostly.” She reached for the blankets. “I’ll do these while you pour.”

  When both tasks were completed, Angela took advantage of the shelf/bed/sofa to rest for a few moments. Slipping off her sequin-trimmed sneakers, she sat with her back against the wall and wrapped her arms around her updrawn knees.

  A glass in each hand, Jack joined her. “Scoot over.”

  She scooted.

  With his shoulders planted beside hers, he tipped his head back and closed his eyes. For the first time in almost twenty-four hours, he emptied his mind. One by one, he willed his knotted muscles to relax.

  For long moments, neither one of them spoke. It was as though each of them needed time to fall back and regroup after the adrenaline-spiked day and explosive night. Time to sort through what had. happened. Time to adjust to the quiet that now cradled them. Then Angela sighed and lifted her glass. Head back, she downed a healthy swallow of the pale gold liqueur.

  “Drink your drink, Jack. Make your phone calls. Then we have to talk.”

  Weariness gave her voice a throaty rasp. The vibrant energy that was so much a part of her had dimmed. Even her hands were still, Jack saw.

  With the fiery Strega burn
ing a hole in his stomach, he located the old-fashioned black rotary-dial phone in the kitchen area and made his calls. First, to Manny Ramirez, wide-awake after his call from Ed Winters and wanting to know what the hell was going on up there. Next, to Winters himself, also wide-awake and not particularly happy about the fact that the feds were now taking over his case.

  Twenty minutes later, he walked across the room and found Angela curled in a tight ball atop the cushions, sound asleep. Smiling tiredly, he covered her with the blankets. Then he ignored the overstuffed chair and nudged her gently toward the wall.

  They both needed rest. Neither one of them would get any curled up in a chair. Stretching out beside her, he settled her in his arms. She made a few grumpy noises and burrowed her nose into his neck.

  Just a few hours of sleep, Jack thought. That was all he needed. All his body craved. Well, not quite all. For now, though, he’d settle for a few hours of quiet with Angela in his arms.

  Endless minutes later, Jack acknowledged that sleep wouldn’t come as long as he was holding Angela. With every rise and fall of the soft breasts pressed against his side, her breath washed his skin. Hot. Moist. Arousing. With every twitch of her body, she brought him out of his light doze and into instant wakefulness.

  He shifted slightly to find a more comfortable position on the lumpy cushions. The movement tipped her closer into his side. She muttered something unintelligible and balanced herself by flinging an arm and a leg across his body. His jaw locked as her knee landed atop his groin. Instantly hard, and now aching with a vengeance, he raised a knee to ease the tightness in his loins.

  He should disengage. He should ease off the narrow plank and plant himself in the damned chair. Instead, he tucked his chin into the silky softness of her hair and waited for the dawn.

  Chapter 7

  Angela woke grudgingly, as she always did.

  With determined stubbornness, she hung on to the last vestiges of sleep. She ignored the tight constriction around her waist. She refused to acknowledge the faint musty odor under her nose, or even the scent of coffee drifting through the blanket she’d pulled over her head. She closed her ears to the sound of running water that had dragged her from sleep. Huddling under the covers, she fought off consciousness for a few more minutes.

  She couldn’t sustain the battle indefinitely. Gradually she identified the musty scent as belonging to the cushions under her nose. The tight constriction she recognized as her skirt, which had twisted around her waist. The running water...?

  She frowned, trying to decide who was using the tiny bathroom her father and brother and various uncles and cousins had added to Uncle Guido’s retreat last summer.

  Jack.

  Full awareness jolted through her.

  Jack. The senator’s car. Oh, God, her mother!

  Thrusting her head out from under the covers, she squinted at her watch through sleep-blurred eyes.

  “Yikes!”

  It was almost six-thirty. She had to make arrangements for someone to pick up her boss. She had to explain to Marc Green what had happened and get someone to cover for her as the senator’s driver until... Until when? Until she found out what the heck was going on.

  She was fighting her way free of the tangle of blankets when Jack emerged from the bathroom.

  “Sorry, did I wake you?”

  “You shouldn’t have let me sleep this late. You shouldn’t have let me go to sleep at all until we—”

  She broke off abruptly as she caught her first full look at the man. This wasn’t the cool, authoritative chief financial officer who’d locked horns with her boss yesterday. This wasn’t even the combination of Fred Astaire and Cary Grant who’d revved her pulse and started her heart knocking last night.

  This man looked like he belonged on Tony’s pit crew. Traces of a beard stubbled his cheeks and chin. His shirt was rolled up at the sleeves, showing a dusting of dark hair on his forearms. The collar gaped at the neck to reveal the strong column of his throat and curls of the same dark hair. Broad, muscular shoulders stretched the fabric at the seams.

  He’d slicked his hair straight back with water, giving himself the appearance of a mature and all-too-sexy Fonz. Angela had the craziest urge to run her fingers though the black mane, just to see if it was as thick and silky as it appeared. Shoving the urge to the back of her mind where it belonged, she yanked at the covers and sat up.

  “I can’t believe I passed out like that.”

  “I can, considering everything you went through yesterday.”

  “Well, I’ve had less stressful days. Did you get any rest?” She glanced at the magazines and fishing gear still occupying the armchair. “No, I guess you didn’t.”

  “I stretched out beside you for a few hours.”

  “What?”

  The grin he gave her was all Fonz. Unrepentant. Unabashed. An invitation to pure trouble. “And no, I didn’t get any rest.”

  Angela knew darn well she ought to be annoyed. She should certainly be indignant at the fact that Jack had taken it upon himself to share the narrow bed with her. Instead, all she felt was a ridiculous and overwhelming disappointment that she’d slept through the entire experience.

  Next time! The swift, fierce promise darted into her mind before she could stop it. The next time she and Jack Merritt occupied the same few cubic feet of airspace, neither one of them would sleep through it!

  “I found some coffee in the cupboard,” he said, reclaiming her wayward attention. “I don’t guarantee anything but the fact that it’s hot. Do you want some to hold you over until we get breakfast?”

  “Breakfast?”

  “I think it’s safe for us to drive back to that town we passed through last night and pick up a few essentials. We’ll go as soon as you wake up...and as soon as you call your mother.”

  “Oh, no! Not you, too!”

  “What can I say? That was the first thing Ed Winters asked about when I talked to him a while ago.”

  “Did he say anything else? Like who made a metal sculpture out of the senator’s car?”

  “No. The guys in lab coats are still going over the pieces.”

  With a small groan, Angela swung her legs over the edge of the narrow bed. Too late, she remembered the skirt twisted around her waist and hips. Chill morning air brushed a long length of stockinged thigh before she yanked the covers back across her lap.

  Nice, Jack thought as a now familiar desire contracted his stomach muscles.

  Very nice.

  He turned, driven as much by the need to put some distance between himself and this sleep-tousled Angela before he did something incredibly stupid as by the recognition that she needed privacy. Scooping up the rubberized, fleece-lined anorak he’d found in one of the closets, he headed for the door.

  “I’m going to take a look around outside. Get my bearings. I won’t be long. If the phone rings before I get back, don’t answer it. Got that?”

  Angela tossed him a sort of salute. “Yes, sir! No, sir!”

  Cold, damp wind skipped across the gray surface of the Chesapeake and cut into Jack’s lungs as he walked the shore behind the cabin. The wind didn’t, however, cut the heat in his lower body.

  Shoving his hands into the parka’s deep pockets, he shook his head in disgust. What in the hell was the matter with him? For the past few months, he’d walked a narrow tightrope, spending his days working the myriad problems that faced him at the hospital, and his nights and weekends up to his neck in an ever-widening investigation. For the past few days, he’d struggled to sort out the implications of Senator Claiborne’s sudden summons to Washington. In the past twenty hours, he’d dodged a drive-by shooter and watched a car go up in flames.

  Now, all he could think about was tumbling the senator’s driver back onto a pile of musty cushions and watching her go up in flames.

  Smart, Merritt. Real smart.

  Manny Ramirez was on a flight to D.C. at this precise moment. Ed Winters was waiting for the agent, still not h
appy about the feds’ involvement, but willing to cooperate. The senator would be opening his front door in a couple of hours to Manny and Ed, who’d inform him of the incident, take his statement and record his reaction.

  In the midst of this tangled, dangerous situation, he had no business letting himself dwell on the long, slender curve of Angela’s thigh. He sure as hell shouldn’t feel this warped satisfaction at the prospect of holing up with her indefinitely.

  He stopped abruptly, his shoulders hunched against the wind, as reality set in. They didn’t have indefinitely. They probably didn’t have more than a few hours. When Manny arrived, he’d plunge Jack back into the investigation that had consumed him these past months.

  Even without Manny’s presence, Jack faced another deadline. He was scheduled to testify before the congressional subcommittee at ten tomorrow morning. At this point, he had two choices. He could either appear at the hearing or tip the investigators’ hands by declining to appear. In either case, he was booked on a flight back to Atlanta tomorrow afternoon. He’d have to think about that flight, Jack decided grimly.

  If, as he suspected, he was the target of the shooting and the car bomb, he didn’t want to draw Angela any deeper into danger than he already had. He’d have to distance himself from her before he headed back into civilization. If he wasn’t the target, he damn sure didn’t want to leave her until he discovered who was. Jaw set, he followed the curve of the shoreline, then circled through the woods to familiarize himself with the terrain.

  The weathered cabin sat on a spit of land that poked out into the vast bay. Stands of tall, white-trunked oaks and a curtain of dense undergrowth screened this stretch of shore from the state road a quarter mile distant. Jack trekked down the narrow, winding dirt track they’d driven up just hours ago.

  With relief, he noted that the utility wires strung through the trees constituted the only signs of human habitation. There were no numbers or arrows painted on a tree trunk to indicate the dirt road led to the shanty, no reflectors, no mailbox, no markers of any kind. Unless someone knew the cabin’s exact location, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to locate.