by Jenna Ryan
“I’ll leave,” she told him. “For what it’s worth, and by way of an apology, I’ll warn you that Shanghai Lily’s sex vultures are preparing to close in. They’ve been hovering just out of range since I got here.”
A faint smile grazed his lips. “The Lolas.”
“The who?”
“That’s their name. Both of them. They’re cousins. Their aunt owns the bar.”
“Shanghai Lily?”
“She inherited it from her great-great-grandmother, Lily the first. Anna Perradine is famous for issuing hollow threats, Kate. She’s heavily addicted and an emotional train wreck. Go home, go to bed, sleep. I guarantee Anna will once the drugs loosen their grip.”
Though she wasn’t sure she believed that, Kate nonetheless felt the knots in her stomach loosen. “Seeing as you appear to know her, I’ll accept that you might be right. In any case, she can hardly—”
The bar went dark, halting her. When it stayed that way, she breathed out. “Yep, really bad idea. I bet there’s fifty ready-to-grope man-hands between here and the door.”
“Not to mention the Lolas.”
Nolan’s voice came from directly beside her. She stiffened when he curled his long fingers around her upper arm. “What are you doing? I can make my way through a roomful of drunks and crackheads. Besides, someone’s firing up the generator.”
“Heard it,” Nolan said. “Stand still.”
“Why?”
Five small lights flickered on. The result was a roomful of freakish shadows and several slurred demands for more whatever.
Kate pushed on Nolan’s restraining hand. “Look, I really am fine on my own. I took kickboxing—”
“Get down!”
She started to follow his gaze but found herself on the floor before she could blink. Mere inches above the table, buckshot blasted apart the red velvet booth.
Ducking lower, Kate swore. Nolan did the same, but he was still on his feet and directly in front of her.
“Get under the table,” he said over his shoulder. “Take her with you.”
One of the Lolas landed next to her with a raspy squeal and the sound of rending silk. The blue smoke that fogged the air couldn’t disguise her dilated eyes.
“What happened?” she demanded thickly. “Who’s shooting? Where’s my cousin?” Her voice went up as awareness trickled in.
Two more blasts of buckshot assaulted the back of the booth.
Lola sank sickly green fingernails into Kate’s arm. “What is this? Why’s someone shooting off fireworks in Aunt Lily’s bar? Why’s… Aw, hell, who cares? My eyes hurt, and I can’t feel my toes.”
Her head plopped onto Kate’s shoulder and she began to hum. Controlling her leaping nerves, Kate propped Lola up. Around them, Lily’s customers staggered, stumbled and crawled for cover.
Although her heart pounded at twice the normal rate, she managed to push Lola farther under the table. “Stay there, okay? You’ll be fine. Or, well, you’ll live anyway. I hope. Did you see where Nolan went?”
Lola blinked suddenly sly eyes. “Nolan, huh? Yummy. Long hair—love that. Great hands—want them on me. Total sexpot. He yours?”
“I don’t think this is the time—”
A hand emerged from the shadows. Before Kate could evade it, Nolan grasped her arm and hauled her to her feet.
“Shooter bolted after the second round,” he said. “Lose the shock, Kate. I need you with me here. I got his ski mask off.” When she glanced past him into the mounting melee, he gave her a small shake. “Snap out of it. I need you to zone in and think. Pale blond hair, pointed jaw, five nine or ten, slim build. Ring any bells?”
Although her pulse still raced, Kate scrambled through her mental store of acquaintances. “Maybe—yes. It could be Anna Perradine’s companion. I—is he gone?”
“Yeah, he’s gone.”
Terror detoured into disbelief at his tone. “And what, that pisses you off?” Grabbing the sides of his jacket, she anchored herself. “That guy tried to kill us, Nolan. You said Anna was all bluster, no balls. I don’t care if she didn’t pull the trigger—her toy boy was obviously more than willing to do it for her. Jesus.”
Angry now and grateful for it, she released him and backed away. “FMI, how the hell did you get across a room filled with panicky people and poorly positioned furniture, pinpoint toy boy and yank his ski mask off without taking a bullet to some part of your body?”
He drew her around the perimeter of the bar where Lily’s customers continued to shuffle into each other. “Put it down to luck and keep moving. We need to get out of here.”
Kate wasn’t foolish enough to argue. But she could talk and walk at the same time. “I thought you were drunk,” she accused.
“I was working on it.”
“I saw shot glasses, Nolan, and empty beer mugs and—”
“It takes a lot, okay? The people who know they shouldn’t be here are starting to panic. You want to stay for the show, be my guest. I’m leaving.”
A jowly man in his sixties wearing a watch cap and Buddy Holly glasses bumped her hip. Did he look familiar? Kate sidestepped and tugged again on Nolan’s arm. “How do we know Anna’s friend’s not waiting for us outside?”
“Because I saw his expression. The guy’s a rabbit. Obedient to a point, but not enough of an idiot to think Anna will stick if he gets caught.”
Kate winced as another man, also vaguely familiar, tried to push through her. “For a surgeon, you know a hell of a lot about traversing minefields and pulling rabbits out of hats.”
“Came with the territory in a former life.” They’d reached the door. “You ready?”
“For almost anything at this point.”
It didn’t surprise her that he kicked rather than shoved the door open. However, the gun he produced from under his jacket got her full attention.
“Are you serious? You’re a physician, and you carry a gun?” Then it hit her. Military mindset. He’d been an army surgeon in that former life.
He kept her firmly behind him as they stepped out into the night. “I can’t see anything with all this fog. We’re lucky. Means he can’t see us either.”
“If we keep talking, he won’t need to see us.”
Nolan almost chuckled. “Is this a sample of the optimism you’re so famous for?”
“Sorry to say I left the lion’s share of my optimism in a booth that’s no longer a booth, thanks to the boyfriend of a woman who, I sincerely hope, went off half-cocked before her brother-in-law had a chance to stop her. Or her lover. Because if Alistair Perradine wants us dead, Nolan, you might as well turn that gun on both of us right now.”
The fog separated, but fortunately no more bullets rang out. Nolan gave a faint headshake as he tucked the gun into his jeans. “I don’t buy Alistair being behind this attack. For all his faults, he’s an honorable man.”
“A statement like that only goes to prove that you are in fact drunk, Doctor. No one in the Perradine family is honorable.”
He nodded at the foggy parking lot. “Is your car there?”
“It was twenty minutes ago.” She snagged his arm before he could move. “Talk to me, Nolan. What do you know about Alistair Perradine that I obviously don’t?”
“Enough to be sure he no longer drives expensive sports cars.” Nolan’s lips took on a slow curve. “I saved his life ten years ago, Kate, pulled him out of a burning Ferrari. Alistair Perradine sends me Christmas cards every year. And every year he tells me he’s grateful.”
“That’s lovely, but—”
“Grateful,” Nolan repeated. “And forever in my debt.”
CHAPTER THREE
He’d wanted to lose himself at Shanghai Lily’s, Nolan reflected. Let his mind and his senses plunge into a nineteenth-century abyss, the kind where men had once stumbled into bars only to wake up worse than dead. Where they’d smoked their brains out on low sofas and either had life-altering epiphanies or let the contents of their pipes lure them into an earl
y grave.
Unfortunately, neither thing had happened because drugs didn’t appeal to him and Kate had interrupted the flow of alcohol to his table. So here he sat, half-trashed, slumped in the passenger seat of her Prius, watching as she worked her way through a dense fogbank on streets that twisted and twined and put to shame the roller coasters he’d ridden as child.
He felt her exasperation when she looked at him but waited until they approached a red light to say, “I don’t wither either, Marshall, and I repeat, there’s no need for us to contact the police.”
“The guy shot up a bar. That makes it a matter for the police. You were in the army, right? What was your rank?”
He resisted an urge to yank the car into a lower gear. “I made captain six months before I bailed.”
“You were an army captain, and yet you refuse…” Hesitating, she narrowed suspicious eyes. “You didn’t go AWOL, did you?”
“Thought about it, but I brought my kid brother home in a pine box instead.”
“And again,” she murmured, “wrong thing to say. I’m sorry, Nolan. I should have known the rumors were true.”
“That one was. The night crawler crap’s a bit more out there.”
She glanced at him. “Not sure I agree with that. Hot trauma surgeon, possibly of the undead variety, only works night shifts. Attention all females. Wait until after dark to take foolish risks…. Why only nights?”
Eyes closed, he settled his head on the seat rest. “Life’s less stressful at night, Kate. Quieter.”
“Yeah? Guess I missed that, what with all the bangs and buckshot that you, for reasons I’m still not getting, don’t see fit to mention to the authorities.”
“Shanghai Lily wouldn’t appreciate the publicity of an official investigation.”
“Because unlike having Anna Perradine’s lapdog rush in and shoot the place up, allowing a cop or two to set foot on the premises would be bad for business.”
For the first time in a long time, amusement kindled sufficiently to elicit a laugh. “Lily has a cop or two on the premises most nights, Kate, just not in an official capacity.”
She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “You know, that’s completely twisted. If this were an earlier century, Lily’s bar would be labeled an opium den slash brothel—and damn it, I sound like my tub-thumping uncle, don’t I?”
“Do you?”
“Yes. But it’s a valid comparison. Lily—”
“Will always have cops for customers. Look, we’ll compromise. I’ll talk to Alistair tomorrow, get his take on this, and we can go from there. Whether Lily wants them to or not, on-duty cops are bound to hear about what went down tonight. Healthier for everyone involved to leave it at that for now.”
“Twisted,” she repeated then moved her head. “Which way?”
“South.”
“Oh, that’s helpful.”
“Turn left. Follow the road until you see a big green sign in the shape of a plant pot. You can’t miss it even in all this fog. It says ‘Lum’s Apothecary.’”
“Is that what it is? An apothecary?”
“No. My bedroom window’s above the U. I’m not big on frills.”
She slanted him a shrewd look. “You think I’m a snob, don’t you, because I have an apartment in an old Edwardian on Telegraph Hill. Never mind that the plumbing’s a horror, and the original owner—who’s now the resident poltergeist—hanged herself after breaking every mirror in the place and poisoning both her husband and the upstairs maid.”
Closing his eyes again, Nolan stretched out his legs. “Why did she break the mirrors?”
A reluctant smile appeared. “For lack of a proper medical term, the physicians of the day called it a ‘condition.’ Seeing as she was seventy-something and the maid was in her twenties, I’d speculate her ‘condition’ was the result of the normal aging process mixed with an overdose of jealousy. It’s an explosive combo, and, if you ask me, unnecessary in the end. All she really needed to do was take a page out of Anna Perradine’s book and buy herself a lover. Problem solved.”
As the ground began to level, Nolan caught the smell of roast duck from a nearby restaurant. He liked the scent of Kate’s perfume better. Eyes half-open, he regarded the foggy shadows on the edge of his Chinatown neighborhood. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“I will if Anna will.” She twitched a shoulder. “I’m just not sure I think she will. Cops do more than investigate, you know. They protect, as well.”
“Uh-huh. Do you want to sleep at my place tonight?”
“What?”
Humor rose. “You don’t need to sound so horrified. I said ‘sleep,’ not let me attack you with an ice pick.”
“I—right. Sorry. Post-threat stress. Very bad night. If I need a bodyguard, I’ll call one of my big, burly brothers.”
“Yeah? What do big and burly do?”
“They’re prosecuting attorneys. My sister’s a podiatrist.”
“That’s fairly disgusting.”
“It can be on a bad day.”
He regarded her briefly. “Your siblings sound well educated.”
“They are,” she agreed. “That’s my family’s condition.”
It wasn’t what she said but her tone of voice when she said it that made him wonder. Unfortunately—or maybe it was fortunately—they’d reached the big green plant pot. Better to look at it than her, Nolan thought. Long blond hair, even longer legs, skin that practically screamed to be touched. And no way was he going to get started on her fascinating brown eyes.
Time to back off, he decided. Straight up, simple beauty wasn’t his preference in any case. He liked his females round and uncomplicated, with just enough mean under the surface to hold his interest for a single sex-filled night.
Beside him, Kate remarked, “The m in Lum’s is partly burned out. Looks like it says ‘Luni’s.’”
“It is as often as it’s not.”
She hit the button to unlock the doors. “You’re so strange, Nolan. All the signs I see are flickering. There’s an extra flashlight in the glove box if you want it.”
“Thanks, but my landlady stuffs candles in my mail slot on nights like this. I fixed her kid’s broken pelvis last year. She’s grateful. She’d also prefer it if I didn’t fall up or down her stairs and break mine.”
“Smart woman. Lawsuits suck.” Kate shrugged. “My landlord plays practical jokes. As we speak, he’ll be blowing the dust off his rubber tarantulas so he can slide them under his tenants’ doors. You have to look down before you enter.” Her eyes twinkled as he climbed out. “Guess I don’t do surgeries for the right people.”
Although Nolan trusted his instincts where Alistair Perradine was concerned, he got Kate to roll down her window and leaned in before leaving. “At the risk of inciting paranoia, it wouldn’t hurt for you to call big or burly and ask one of them to spend what’s left of the night—”
That was as far as he got, and it was nothing more than a stroke of pure dumb luck that he happened to glance past her to the street. Luckier still that the fog chose that precise moment to part. In a move almost too quick to see, a man who’d been standing behind a lamppost spun to the side and whipped out a gun.
Swearing, Nolan wrenched the driver’s door open, unlocked Kate’s seatbelt and yanked her from the car.
“Are you insane?”
“Hope so.” Shoving her down, he grabbed his gun and only just managed to duck in time as three silenced bullets took out the side windows. “But not tonight, it seems. Lum’s doorway.” He wrapped a hand around the back of her neck. “It’s inset. Go.”
She didn’t argue, which made his life easier but still didn’t tell him who the shooter was or what the hell was going on.
He considered firing back, but the guy was using a van for cover now.
Cursing under his breath, Nolan ran for the entryway where Kate knelt. Although he saw fear, there was no sign of hysteria.
She looked up and down the st
reet while he checked his clip for ammo. “It’s not toy boy, is it?” she whispered.
“Not even close.” He slapped the clip back in, maintaining his crouch. “This guy’s a pro.”
“How do you—”
“I saw him move. He’s had stealth training. Gun’s probably military issue. He’s using a silencer. He wants to get in and out fast, no bangs, no calls to the cops. Sorry to screw up your night, pal, but…” Angling his weapon skyward, Nolan fired six shots in groups of three.
Between rounds, the windshield of Kate’s Prius exploded. Another pair of bullets ricocheted off the bricks to his left.
Nolan forced himself not to retaliate. He’d have gone for the guy in a heartbeat under other circumstances, but people lived around here and walked the streets of Chinatown, even on cool, foggy nights.
“Whoever he is, he’s a marksman,” he said and let two more shots go into the high air.
“I hear sirens.” Kate pointed north. “They’re coming this way.”
The words were barely out of her mouth when a deafening explosion rocked the night. A wall of flames erupted in front of them. The force of the blast knocked Nolan into Kate and both of them into the barred apothecary door.
Smoke belched outward and upward from the fire and made seeing anything other than the choking black plumes impossible. But even as he helped a dazed Kate to her knees, Nolan understood one thing. While blowing up the car might have been an accident, this was a targeted hit.
At least one of them, he thought grimly, was in serious trouble.
CHAPTER FOUR
Kate had answered the same questions for the better part of two hours. Did she know of anyone who might want her dead? Yes. Was she sure? Yes. Could she be more specific? Anna Perradine had threatened her life. Specific enough? Could she describe her Chinatown assailant? He’d had a big gun and fast feet.
She didn’t think the police had been very happy with her replies.
The interrogation room was cold and sterile, and it smelled strongly of disinfectant. When it came time to leave, however, Kate discovered that cold and sterile was infinitely better than a patrol car ride that ended in an old cemetery with tippy headstones and dead weeds that brushed the bottom of her coat when she walked.
