The Baby Chase

by Jennifer Greene

  But Tracey had known. She’d said. She’d commented on both the stabbing and the jeweled letter opener.

  That was all Rebecca had needed to hear to be sure Ms. Ducet was the actual murderess. She couldn’t wait to get away from the woman. Couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel, to tell Gabe—and the police—that they had some real information they could use to nail the woman. And, please God, to free her brother from that horrible jail cell.

  The highway had been relatively empty, but heavier traffic clustered near town, and Rebecca was so distracted she took several wrong turns. It was pretty hard to get lost in Vegas—the major hotels shot up to cloud height, with their names in clear lights—but she simply wasn’t concentrating on directions.

  Eventually she located Circus Circus, mentally kicking herself for wasting time, when all she wanted was to hurry. She aimed up the multi-level parking facility, yanked a slip of paper from the machine and blinked in the sudden cool shade after all that blinding sun. She was supposed to meet Gabe in her room. With her lollygagging around and getting lost, it was hard to guess if he could have arrived before she did.

  She couldn’t wait to filch a pop—her dry throat was begging for one—and to see his face when she spilled her news about Tracey. She knew he’d listen seriously, because Gabe never failed to be objective about his work. And there’d be an eensy glint of miffed male pride in his eyes, because, poor baby, his ego really hated it when she discovered something that he hadn’t. But Rebecca knew he’d be pleased, for her, with her. Maybe pleased enough to forget that she’d ignored all his orders regarding how that meeting with Tracey was supposed to go.

  Gabe should know by now—especially after last night—that she really didn’t take orders or warnings well. Her heart suddenly clenched. When someone she cared about was involved, she had a disgracefully long history of ignoring the rules—but never as many rules as she’d broken with Gabe, and never at such risk to her heart.

  Now, though, was no time to dwell on that. Because the parking garage on the first level was packed, she had to circle up to the next floor. Finally she found a spot for the Mazda to squeeze into. She cut the engine, and grabbed the key and her purse. Her pulse was racing like a runaway freight train, and her nerves were a frantic jumble of anticipation at the thought of seeing Gabe and the edgy rush and excitement left over from the meeting with Tracey.

  She stepped out of the car and locked it, then turned around. There was nothing but silent, oppressive concrete in every direction, the parking ramp gloomy and dim. Momentarily she was disoriented, unsure where the exit was or how to get back into the hotel.

  “Hey!”

  She turned her head at the sound of the man’s voice. In that first instant, it didn’t seem that odd that a stranger would be calling her—Vegas was a tourist place, so strangers naturally picked up conversations with fellow strangers almost everywhere. And the first thing she saw was the man’s smile. Her mind registered other details, like that he was tall and blond and wearing innocuously nice tourist clothes, a nice-looking youngish man in his mid-thirties…and suddenly her memory spun.

  Tammy had a sidekick-man friend. It was one of the reasons she should have connected Tammy to Tracey before, because a boyfriend had been part of the scam Tracey’d tried to pull on the Fortune family the first time. Dwayne, Wayne, something like that… But even as fast as her pulse recognized danger, it was too late. In those few seconds, he’d already jogged up to her. Even in the murky light, his boyish smile and polite, cordial expression were very clear.

  And then she caught the bright, pretty glint of silver in his right hand. He was still smiling when he raised the blade.

  There was no one in sight, no sound or movement indicating that anyone else was remotely nearby. That didn’t stop Rebecca. She sucked in a lungful of air, with every intention of screaming loud enough to wake the dead.

  The scream never made it. She barely yelped out a squeak before he was on her, whipping her around, yanking her arm painfully tight behind her back. The smell of a thick, cloying men’s cologne assaulted her nostrils. She suddenly couldn’t breathe. The silver blade shot gorgeous, shiny reflections of light on the far concrete wall, but the knife was pressed right at her throat. She could feel the point. She could feel panic, bubbling up like a sudden, inescapable tidal wave.

  The name Wayne Potts shot into her head like a bullet. A totally useless bullet, because putting together all the details was no weapon that could protect her now. She should have been more careful. She should have trusted her intuition, and tried harder to remember why the whole Tammy Diller/boyfriend story bothered her long before this. But all those should-have-beens were nothing compared to the feel of that cool, smooth blade against her throat.

  “You’re late, Ms. Fortune. I expected you a good twenty minutes ago, and was starting to wonder what the hell could have happened to you. Did you get lost? It should only have taken you so much time to drive a short fifteen miles.”

  He wanted to talk? She was more in the mood to wet her pants, vent a solid case of hysteria, dissolve in a puddle of terror…maybe all three at the same time. There was no chance she could concentrate on anything but that knife, so close, so close, already pricking the skin of her throat. On the other hand, as long as he was talking, she wasn’t dying. “How did you know my name?”

  “Hardly a challenge. Car phones are a wonderful technological boon, don’t you think? I heard all about you. Tracey couldn’t wait to tell me all about you. And you talked a good game, honey. You had Tracey convinced you were as naive as a newborn kitten…and there was no doubt in her mind that you believed every word she said. I learned real young to recognize a counterfeit dollar.”

  He yanked her arm again, making her eyes burn with hot tears. Beneath the thick smell of men’s cologne was the stench of his sweat. Excitement sweat. He liked this, she understood with a primal instinct. She couldn’t make her voice sound real, even to save her life. “I don’t understand. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I never heard of any Tracey—”

  His chuckle was without humor, right next to her ear. “Good try, babe. But I wouldn’t try lying to a pro. You recognized Tracey right off the bat, didn’t you? Of course you did. She looks just like your older sister. I told Tracey that meeting idea was stupid, but she just wouldn’t listen, said it was too important for us to find out what you knew. And we found out that answer, didn’t we? You know too damn much—”

  From nowhere came the sudden sound of tires screeching and squealing. The interruption was enough to distract him into looking up. Not Rebecca. When he jerked up his head, the knife at her throat tightened, stung, the blade drawing blood she could feel. There was no way she could risk moving her head even a fraction. But the corner of her eyes caught the shiny white top of Gabe’s rental car, racing hell-bent for leather around the curve of the parking ramp.

  The engine zoomed, accelerating like a jet preparing for takeoff, coming, coming, as if the car impossibly intended to mow down them both. Instead, just out of her vision, she heard an ear-shattering, metal-screaming crunch as Gabe crashed straight into the car parked next to hers. His wheels were still spinning, his engine still running, when the driver’s door shot open.

  The whole thing didn’t take seconds. If Wayne had had a brain, he’d undoubtedly have realized that he was holding the highest card, and his best move was to hold on even tighter to her. But there was no time for anything but an instinctive response, and Wayne’s instinctive response to a problem was to run.

  The blade skimmed her throat, biting and stinging like holy blazes, but then he pushed her, roughly, and she was suddenly free. Her abdomen slammed into the hood of a car, bruising hard. For a second, she couldn’t catch her balance, couldn’t catch her breath, and all she really wanted to do was let her knees buckle and have a nice, noisy case of hysterics—but then she saw Gabe. He was moving like a blue streak, something terrifying in his black eyes.

  “Gabe, he h
as a knife!” she yelled, but it was like talking to a jet. A deaf jet. He seemed to fly on top of Wayne in a tackle that left them both scrambling on the cement. The silver knife arced in the air, fell and skittered under some stranger’s car, out of sight.

  Gabe was already twisting Wayne around, yanking him up, pulling back one arm. He buried a fist in his diaphragm, making Wayne double over with a loud whoomph. Gabe grabbed him again, as if the man didn’t weigh any more than a dog, clapped both hands hard over his ears and then slammed him, hard, against the cement wall. Wayne started screaming and crying, trying to scramble away, trying to protect himself.

  Rebecca froze, her hand on her stomach, too shook up to have a clue what to do for an instant—help Gabe, obviously, but how? Get the knife? Call the police, but how could she leave him?

  And then the sound of a car engine added to the confusion of noise—it was just some tourists, an older couple who’d unwittingly chosen that moment to need a parking place. Rebecca stumbled into the middle of the lane to block their path, waving wildly at the driver to make him stop. Two sets of eyes stared at her through the windshield, looking both bewildered and startled.

  “Just leave the car here and call the police—please!” she yelled at them. When they still sat there, looking shell-shocked, she yelped again, “Go! Go into the hotel and call the police! Please!”

  Both the man and his wife hustled out of their doors then. The white-haired gentleman had the presence of mind to ask her, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she assured them, but once they quickly ducked out of sight, she thought she’d never been less “fine” in her entire life. As she whirled around to see Gabe’s fist slam into Wayne’s stomach again, she thought Gabe was hardly fine, either.

  He was scaring her. Maybe it was the other man who was taking the battering, but some nameless feminine instinct sensed that Gabe was taking a different kind of beating. She’d never seen him so dead cold before. She’d never seen a hint of violence, in his eyes, in his actions. Some instinct made her call out, “Gabe, he didn’t hurt me! I’m all right.”

  There was no immediate response. She wasn’t sure if he heard her, if he saw her, if he even knew she was there. She jogged toward the men, still unsure what to do, what she could do, what needed doing. The closer she came, the clearer she could see the dark rage in Gabe’s expression. God, that look was imprinted on her mind like a haunting nightmare.

  “I’m okay. He didn’t hurt me,” she repeated, and then repeated it again.

  Maybe he finally heard her. Maybe he finally just stopped. Wayne slumped against the concrete wall, then sank to his knees on the ground, gasping and crying. For an instant, he didn’t seem to believe that Gabe had quit hitting him and was letting him be, but Wayne wasn’t going anywhere, anyway.

  Metal doors slapped open. People started running. Rebecca saw uniformed security people racing toward them, heard the wail of a siren, and closed her eyes for a second to try, just try, to catch her breath.

  When she opened them, in spite of all the noise and shouts and milling bodies, all she really saw were Gabe’s eyes from a half-dozen feet away, meeting hers as if there weren’t a soul in the entire universe but the two of them.

  Ten

  Gabe rapped his knuckles on the bathroom door. “Room service.”

  He heard a muffled chuckle. “At the moment, room service would be stuck with more than an eyeful. I’m still in the bathtub, Gabe. Be out in two shakes.”

  “No reason to come out. The longer you soak, the better. But this chicken soup’s gonna get cold. Why don’t you just grab one of those extra towels and wrap it around you for a cover-up, so I can bring the food in?”

  “You mean eat dinner in the bathtub?” He heard her sigh. “What a decadent, disgraceful, shamelessly lazy idea.”

  “Does that mean no, or does that mean that you’ve got the towel on?”

  “It means I’ve got the towel on and I can’t believe you managed to worm chicken soup out of room service.”

  He had to balance the tray on one arm to open the door. Fragrant, warm steam billowed out, carrying some exotic, sensual, pure-female scent like jasmine. The scent awakened every masculine hormone, but, being as good as a monk, Gabe kept his eyes averted from Rebecca’s body. There was no point in telling shorty that he’d have found some way to bribe his way in there if the chicken soup hadn’t worked. Even less point in telling her that he was damned determined to see her naked.

  Rebecca had told him—a dozen times now—that she was “fine.” He’d seen the long, skinny cut that son of a bitch had put on her neck. Before, though, she’d been clothed from long sleeves to ankles, and there’d been no way to know if the bastard had injured her anywhere else. Trusting Rebecca to admit to being hurt was like waiting for cows to waltz.

  “Just so you know I haven’t got these waiter skills down pat yet. If I end up spilling chicken soup in the bathtub, you can forgo the tip.” With his gaze still averted, he set up the tray on the sink, then booted the door closed so that she wouldn’t lose any more of that hotter-than-sex steamy heat.

  “Spoon first, ma’am. Then the bowl. They gave you a linen napkin for this elegant meal, but personally I think it’d look pretty silly tied under your chin. We’ll just put it within reach. And seeing as it’s only me, I’m making the announcement right now that it’s okay if you slurp.”

  He earned a couple of chuckles from her, but they didn’t sound like Rebecca’s laugh and they didn’t last long. Still playing the virtuous gentleman, he managed to hunker over the tub and serve the food without once peeking a glance below her neck.

  Once she dived into that bowl of soup, though, he used the toilet seat for a chair and parked there. The heat gave him an excuse to yank off his shoes and socks, but that was only to look busy. The corners of both his eyes were on her tighter than the skin on a peach.

  Her curly hair had turned into a wild garnet-and-cinnamon halo in the humidity. Damp strands clung to her brow and nape. She’d modestly knotted the wet towel, concealing even the swell of her breasts, but those hotel towels were thankfully skimpy by nature.

  Her skin was whiter than virgin snow, and he could see plenty of it. The red pinprick knife slice on her throat made his gut clench and twist. So did the ink-blot bruise on her thigh, and there were two more on her forearms—blotches of bruises like handprints. That creep had mauled her around really hard. It could have been worse, Gabe kept telling himself. But it was worse.

  Where Rebecca was hurt the most didn’t show up in physical scrapes and bruises. It was in her eyes. There was no sass in those forest green eyes tonight, no sparkle; she dived into the soup with a decent appetite, but her gaze skittered around like a cornered rabbit’s, landing on nothing, settling on nothing. She was still seeing fear. She was still feeling fear.

  It’d been three hours since the cops cuffed Wayne and taken him away. All the cops’ questions had been answered, all the commotion and hoopla had long ago died down. Shorty’d stayed real cool, real calm. She didn’t seem to know that when you went through something traumatic and terrifying, sooner or later there was always some reaction.

  “How’d you even think of chicken soup? Have you been secretly hiding a maternal caretaking streak all this time?” she teased him.

  “Now don’t go leaping to any rash, insulting conclusions. I just couldn’t think of anything else but soup. I didn’t figure you’d be in any mood to eat anything heavy.”

  “Well, you did good. No way I could have handled a steak, not tonight…. Do you think the police have caught Tracey by now?”

  Back to that. They’d already covered that ground, but Gabe wasn’t surprised she couldn’t let it go. “I think the chances are excellent. Tracey had no way to know what happened to her sidekick, no reason to hide or guess anything had gone wrong. She was likely headed straight home to connect fast with Wayne. I’d think the cops would have had a really easy job tracking her down.”

&n
bsp; “You think I should call my mom again?”

  More old ground. “I’d guess that Kate hasn’t been off Ma Bell since you called her the first time. Like I told you, she had an intuition about the Tammy Diller/Tracey Ducet connection—enough to make me plug the Ducet name into the computer banks. The woman was just so skilled with changing names and identities that tracking her background took time. We’d have gotten it. But not half as fast as the way this played out. And the point is that knowing your mother, she’ll be on this like a bear stirring a hornet’s nest. I’d bet the bank that Kate has already—long and loudly—yanked the tie on every lawyer involved in your brother’s case.”

  “It’s going to make a difference, isn’t it, Gabe?”

  “You bet it is.”

  “I can’t say I ever want to meet up with Wayne-boy and a knife again. Or that awful woman. But it was worth it. If something like this hadn’t happened—something real, something concrete—we’d never have been able to force Tracey’s hand. Whatever illegal stuff she was involved in, there just wasn’t a connection to Monica’s murder. Not a provable connection, before this.”

  “Yeah.” Gabe had to bite out the single syllable. What he wanted to do was lecture her for ignoring him and taking such damn fool insane risks. It would wait. He’d get around to yelling at her, because she sure as spit deserved it. But not tonight; definitely, definitely, not tonight.

  Doe-soft eyes lanced on his face. The damn woman didn’t even know how haunted they were. “I still don’t understand how you found me so fast.”

  They’d trekked down that conversational road before, too, but Gabe patiently covered it again. “My intention was to follow Tammy/Tracey, like I told you, because I could see right away in that meeting that something scared you about her. My first thought was to track her, find out exactly where she was going and what she planned to do next. And that’s what I was doing, until I saw her reach down, while she was driving, and put a cellular phone to her ear. The only person she would likely be calling was her sidekick. And if she was reporting in to her boyfriend, that meant—as far as I was concerned—that whatever she was doing dropped on the priority scale. He was the immediate and potential threat to you.”