Gabe rapped on the door before she had conquered the bracelet’s clasp. The instant she let him in, his gaze scored the length of her as if he were a daddy dog examining his wayward baby for fleas. “You feel okay? You sleep all right? You ready for this?”
“I couldn’t be feeling better, and I’m raring to go.” She meant to sound reassuring, but abruptly discovered that she didn’t have to sell him any fibs. Her stomach immediately settled down at the look of him—even if her pulse was suddenly racing like a manic battery.
Gabe’s attire was casual—camp shirt, jeans, a lightweight aviator jacket. Whether dressed casually or formally, he always managed to look a ton more put-together than she did. His shirts stayed tucked; his hair stayed brushed. His cheeks were fresh-shaven, she noticed, but her heart flip-flopped at the velvet shadows under his eyes. He hadn’t forgotten the night before.
Neither had she.
Maybe she’d worriedly suspected before last night that she was falling in love with him. But now she knew. Forget all that confounded clawing desire; she was embarrassed at how abandonedly she’d thrown herself at him the night before. The chemistry was compelling and powerful, but it was only one symptom of this particular disease. Her mind turned to butter just from being near him, and her knees turned to noodles. The damn man had captured a corner of her heart and clenched it in a big, soft fist.
“I’m still not easy about letting you do this,” he said darkly.
“Let me give you a tip, love bug. Don’t use the words let or allow around a woman today, and you’ll save yourself a shiner.”
He leaned one shoulder against the door jamb. “I wouldn’t be talking to other women the way I talk to you. This isn’t about gender. Some people are gorillas, some lambs. You’re gonna be a lamb till the day you die.”
“Well, that’s possibly the truth, but if you think for a minute, you’ll realize that my being a lamb is a mighty advantage.” She grabbed her purse, and the scrap of paper holding directions that Tammy had given her the night before, and then zoomed past him down the hall, toward the elevator. “There’s nothing to worry about. Trust me—I’m the worst coward you’ll ever know. If you think I’d do anything to provoke our dear Ms. Diller, you’re out of your mind.”
Gabe closed the door and chased after her. Both of them reached to punch the elevator button at the same time. “I believe that the same way I swallow politicians’ promises. You’re not only no coward, you’ve taken one reckless risk after another from the day I met you. And this is one afternoon I don’t want you to take any risks. You remember everything we talked about last night? You cut out of there if you even sense a problem. If you even smell it. If you even feel uneasy.”
The elevator doors whooshed open. By the time she stepped in, her eyes sparkled with devilment. “Gabe, Gabe, Gabe…don’t tell me you’re starting to believe in instincts and intuition? You’re not advising me to follow my gut feelings, are you?”
Gabe sighed, heavily and loudly. “When you start out this sassy, God knows how I’m gonna be able to deal with you by the end of the day.”
Efficient as a marine sergeant, he drilled her on the plans they’d discussed yesterday, where he’d be, where and when they’d meet up, the whole kaboodle. He had a map for her, marked up with yellow marker, too. Instead of sleeping the night before, he’d apparently driven out to the location set up by Tammy and checked out the whole lay of the land.
By the time he finished his whole lethal list of orders, they’d exited the elevator and passed through the lobby, and were nearing a restaurant. Before pushing through those doors, though, he slapped a key in her hand.
“What’s this?”
“I rented you a car. A black Mazda RX-7.”
She blinked. “A plain old cute little Chevy would have done me.”
“Maybe. But if you decide you want to cut out, you put your foot on that accelerator, it’ll move.”
Rebecca hadn’t even tried to get a word in before then. It’d have been like interrupting a surgeon with a scalpel in his hands. Gabe was in his element organizing and planning, and, truth to tell, he was wonderful at it. His last comment, though, she simply couldn’t let pass.
She put her hand on his elbow to catch his attention, and then said softly, quietly, “I don’t cut out on trouble, Gabe. I may be scared, I may throw up, I may bungle things and handle them badly. But I don’t cut out when there’s a problem. You can take that to the bank.”
Nine
Although the drive from Las Vegas to the Red Rock Canyon lands was only fifteen miles, it might as well have been the distance to another planet. Civilized glitter and glitz first turned into desert, then into wild, raw, mountainous rock country.
For a tourist tired of losing money at blackjack, Gabe could easily see how a nature trek to the canyons would be a refreshing change. Somehow, though, he suspected Tammy Diller had chosen the location for entirely different reasons.
He scratched his chin…very, very quietly. Tammy had already arrived—in a pale yellow Cadillac with rental plates. He’d already taken a long, slow drink of her, and he didn’t like the taste.
Although Ms. Diller didn’t know it, Gabe was twenty-five feet above her, lying flat on an itchy, dusty rock slab. It was an unbeatable vantage point, close enough for him to even hear the conversation directly, if he was lucky. But that was assuming he didn’t fry first.
Tammy had suggested Rebecca meet her at the picnic site inside the recreation park area. Technically, it was a logical, innocuous, peaceful spot for a private chat—and apparently safe, because it was public. Only on a midweek afternoon, with a relentless sun reflecting off the striated, naked rocks, it was bone-baking hot. There wasn’t a body anywhere around—no birds, no critters, and for sure no other humans.
Gabe had brought a canteen, but he didn’t dare risk a drink for fear of making noise. And he was pretty sure a geologist would find the countryside a paradise—a few gnarled cottonwood trees cast some blessed shade on the picnic site, but beyond that, salmon-and-apricot rock formations rose in eerie spires and shapes, backdropped by multicolored sandstone bluffs. A lot of schist in the canyon walls, Gabe guessed, because they were striated with garnet and minerals and iron and all kinds of striking color.
He didn’t give a damn about the geology or the beauty. When he left his car miles back and hiked to the site, it had kept ragging on his nerves, how isolated the location was. No population. No buildings in sight. A fine spot to do anything and not risk getting caught.
And the lady below kept pushing his personal alarm buttons. Tammy had arrived twenty minutes ahead of the scheduled meeting, so he’d had ample time to study her. Big hair. Brown, shoulder-length; he supposed another woman would call the style artful. He called it cheap.
Her makeup was cheap, too, and she seemed to favor applying it by the pound on her eyes. Long legs—not bad. A fussy-gussy blouse dripped lace over a significantly stacked upper deck. Gabe thought she was probably trying to look innocent and trustworthy with that lace getup, and the clothes cost enough; it was the way she wore them, the way she walked. She was trash. Gabe suspected Rebecca’d yank his chain with a long feminist harangue if he used that sexist term around her.
But she was. Trash to the bone. Ten miles of rough road in those cold eyes. Nothing wrong with the face—the woman was essentially pretty—but the expression was harder than shoe leather. She was edgy enough to keep jumping at sounds that weren’t there—and he wasn’t making any.
They both heard the purr of a car engine—it had to be Rebecca coming. Gabe’s muscles clenched, but he never cut his eyes from Tammy. Faster than bad news, she crushed a cigarette, tossed out the gum, wrapped a scarf around her hair, put on a big pair of sunglasses and rearranged her face into a calm, cool model of serenity.
Rebecca braked the black Mazda right next to Tammy’s car and climbed out. Okay, Red, Gabe thought. Just be good for me this one time. Do what we said. Chitchat, but no more. Don’t bring up Mon
ica, don’t bring up your brother, and for God’s sake, don’t bring up murder. You can risk your neck tomorrow, shorty, I promise, but just be careful this one time, okay? Just this once…
“Ms. Diller?” Rebecca obviously spotted the other woman immediately, because she strode straight toward her. God, she was like a ray of clean, natural sunshine compared to that road-hard piece of work.
Only something was wrong. Gabe didn’t know what, couldn’t guess what. But he knew Rebecca’s body—intimately. It might not have been apparent to anyone else, but her shoulders suddenly tensed up—even the muscles in her minuscule fanny tightened—and her smile suddenly looked like an artificial “company” smile.
Alarm buttons clanged all through Gabe’s nervous system. He’d plugged into his computer system in the wee small hours, hoping that more background on Tammy would finally surface—or that another suspect might pan out. Monica had no shortage of enemies. He’d had his staff checking every name Kate and Jake Fortune had come up with. Reams of information were still emerging from that investigation—some easier to dig up than others. But no pay dirt. Nothing sure that Gabe could have used to justify calling off this whole crazy meeting.
Now, though, he wished he’d said to hell with logic and facts and just done it. Called it off. If Rebecca was shook up at the look of the woman, there was obviously something he didn’t know. Gabe liked surprises. But not concerning Rebecca, and, dammit, not concerning her safety.
Still, she seemed to recover quickly from that first startled stiffness. Her hand extended to Tammy and, as was typical of Ms. Pollyanna, her voice held warmth and the natural bubble of enthusiasm. “Hi there! What an incredibly beautiful place. And I really appreciate your taking the time to meet me.”
Tammy clasped her hand with a smile brighter than fool’s gold. Her southern accent sounded authentic, but her voice dripped more sugar than Gabe had ever heard in New Orleans. “I just always loved this area, and it seemed like such an ideal place to relax. It’s awfully hard to find a quiet spot in Vegas.”
“You’re not kidding.”
Gabe missed some of the start-up chitchat. Tammy’s back was to him, making it easy enough to spy, which had originally been all he thought he’d ever be able to do—get close enough to watch her, close enough to move fast if there seemed any threat to Rebecca. It was an unexpected gift that sound carried so well in that total quiet, crystal-sharp air, but the women’s voices blurred if they moved at all. Women being women, they couldn’t stand still. Gabe was trying not to breathe, trying to ignore the buzzing itch at his nape, trying to forget the heat and the gritty pointed rock stabbing his chest.
They seemed to be just companionably chatting, nothing tense, nothing worrisome, judging from the glimpses he could catch of Rebecca’s face. She was chattering like a gregarious, friendly magpie, and Gabe thought Attagirl, you’re doing this just right, shorty.
Then they ambled a little closer to him, and out of nowhere Tammy cocked her innocent little head and got down to business. “Everywhere I went yesterday, someone seemed to say you were looking for me. With us not knowing each other from Adam, I couldn’t imagine why.”
“Well, if I can be frank with you…”
A sudden scissor of alarm sheared up Gabe’s spine. It was that guileless tone of Rebecca’s. The last time he heard it, she’d been blithely, gently informing him that she never cut and ran on a problem. And, dammit, he knew that. She’d more than proved that there was no harebrained thing she wouldn’t do to help her brother. She never backed down from a problem because of risk. And she’d intimately taught him that lesson the night before—with the risks she’d taken with him.
Every moment, every touch and wild, sweeping caress from last night echoed in his mind. And that scissor of alarm clipping up his spine suddenly started slashing at him at warp speed.
“Of course you can be frank with me, honey,” Tammy reassured her.
“Well…I don’t know if you read about Monica Malone’s murder in the newspapers, but my brother Jake was charged with the crime. I found a copy of a letter that Monica wrote to you around the time of her death. I don’t have any idea what connection you had with her, but I was just hoping you could help me. I’m looking for something, anything, that might help me clear my brother.”
Gabe’s heart stopped. His throat went drier than the Sahara at high noon. Not only had he lectured her a dozen times, she’d agreed, she’d understood that the one subject she mustn’t bring up with Tammy was Monica’s murder. It was the same as inviting the woman to see Rebecca as a serious threat. He thought, Damn you, Red, don’t you dare say one more word.
For that instant, he couldn’t see Tammy’s face, but she raised her hands in an innocent gesture. “I knew, of course, about Monica’s death, because she was such a public Hollywood figure, and it was everywhere in the media. But, gosh, I sure never knew her personally—”
“But there was a letter to you,” Rebecca persisted firmly.
Gabe’s heart started beating again—in fast, sick, worried thuds. Enough adrenaline pumped through his veins to threaten an OD rush. He mentally debated whether, when he caught up with shorty again, he’d boil her in oil, tie her to a post on an anthill, or drown her. All those options were so tempting, it was tough to pin down a favorite. But that was for later, and as of that moment, his gaze narrowed on Tammy. He didn’t plan to let the lady out of his sight, even to blink.
“Well, you’re so right about my getting that letter from Monica,” Tammy smoothly admitted. “Really took me by surprise. As you can probably guess, with my looks and all, I’ve done some modeling. I thought Monica must have been contacting me because of that. I read somewhere that she had an affiliation with your family’s cosmetic company, and for just a real short spurt here, I was in between jobs. Truthfully, though, I don’t know. I was working after that, so I just never had a chance to follow up with that letter.”
“Well, shoot,” Rebecca said. “I’d really hoped you might have some concrete ideas I could follow up, some connection with someone to Monica besides my brother.”
“Afraid not, sugar. I never met the woman. Not that I didn’t feel sympathy… I mean, how terrible, that an old Hollywood star would get murdered like that, stabbed with a jeweled letter opener, just like in some movie. Shocking to believe anyone could do such a thing, isn’t it? Just gives me the willies even to think about it.”
Hell. Something new was wrong. Rebecca came up with a response, but the color washed out of her face and she suddenly clenched her hands. The tense movement made the bracelet on her wrist jangle.
Tammy said something about the charm bracelet, and the conversation got sidetracked to jewelry, an obvious effort by Ms. Diller to switch the subject from Monica. Both women made itchy movements. Both plucked car keys from their purses and dangled them, still chatting. Neither wanted to pursue this “meeting” any longer, but neither seemed to know how to cut it off quickly, either.
Gabe told himself it was okay to breathe. Nothing more was going to happen at this instant. Tammy would have, could have, made some move on Rebecca if she was going to. It was also possible that, on her terms, the meeting had gone well. She’d had the chance to find out what Rebecca wanted, and with any luck even believed that she’d sold Rebecca her whole fine, forthright, honest act.
Regretfully, though, Gabe had never believed the easy, happy endings in fairy tales.
Lying there still was driving him nuts. He wanted to climb off that rock, hike back to his car and get there before Tammy took off. Unfortunately, he couldn’t budge without making noises that would reveal his presence. Patience was required until Tammy left, but his mind was spinning ahead, planning. Even if he ended up long minutes behind Ms. Diller, following her wouldn’t be that hard. He could catch up. A limited number of roads led out of this canyon area, and that pretty yellow Cadillac would be easy to spot on the highway.
He didn’t know where Tammy was going from here, but every gut instinct war
ned him to find out. Following her, seeing what she did next, was the best way to find out if she was upset or intended to act on the information she’d learned from Rebecca.
Later, he’d deal with shorty.
Rebecca’s hands were slippery on the steering wheel, damp from both nerves and excitement. The black Mazda zoomed along the highway back to Vegas, galloping past ninety before she realized how hard her foot was smashed on the accelerator. It was like trying to hold a Thoroughbred back at the Derby. The baby wanted to run like the wind.
So did Rebecca.
She’d almost had a heart attack when she first saw Tammy. Though the woman had tried to make herself look different, she had an incredible likeness to Rebecca’s older sister, Lindsay. The instant she realized that, a dozen puzzle pieces had suddenly clicked together.
Tammy Diller was just a fake name for Tracey Ducet. She’d known there was something about the name that rang a memory bell for her. She’d known the whole story of the woman who tried to pass herself off as Lindsay’s missing twin more than a year before—the whole family had been up in arms. She just hadn’t made the connection until she laid eyes on the woman.
Tracey/Tammy had five tons of gall to risk meeting with her. No disguise was that good. But arrogance—and gambling for big stakes—was clearly part of the woman’s makeup.
As if recognizing her weren’t heart attack enough, Rebecca almost had a second one when Tracey/Tammy mentioned Monica’s being stabbed. The murder weapon had never been mentioned in any of the papers or tabloids. The police had guarded that information tighter than gold. They’d had ample up-front evidence to charge her brother with the crime, but there had still been some unanswered questions—notably how many fingerprints had been on the antique jeweled letter opener, and who else those smudged prints might belong to. Because of the Fortune name, it was going to be a big trial, and they were scared of screwing it up. Information that could directly affect the trial had been ruthlessly kept out of the press.
The Baby Chase Page 12
