by Linda Howard
Oh, God. Why was he still up? Normally she would have been gratified that he’d waited up for her, but not now, not tonight. He was probably pissed about True and Milla, and she was too exhausted to dance a verbal fandango with him.
“I’m so tired I could sleep right here,” she said as she got out of the car. “I probably should have stayed at the hospital.”
“Probably,” he agreed, stepping aside so she could enter the house. “Then you would have been there when I checked.”
She froze in mid-step, then continued through the house and up the stairs, all but hauling herself up them. Damn it! She should have covered herself somehow, but since he’d accused her of having an affair with True, and he knew True wasn’t with her, she hadn’t even considered he would check up on her.
“Nothing to say?” Rip asked behind her.
“No. If you’re going to have a shit fit because I didn’t hear a page, or the staff didn’t know where I was, there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m going to shower and go to bed.”
“I didn’t call. I went to both hospitals. You weren’t there. Neither was Felicia D’Angelo. So I looked in your patient Rolodex and got Felicia’s number, and called to check on her. She said she’s feeling fine, in case you’re wondering.”
Damn. Double damn. Fuck. She always kept a record of her current patients’ home phone numbers here at the house, for her convenience. When had Rip turned into fucking Sherlock Holmes?
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything to say tonight. She needed to talk to True. She was losing control and she knew it, because she didn’t swear, even to herself, unless she was pushed to the wall. She didn’t dare get into an argument with Rip now, or she’d say more than she should.
She went into the bedroom and closed the door, leaning back against it while she waited to see if Rip would follow, if a push would send her stumbling across the room. But after a moment she heard his footsteps continue down the hall to the room where he was sleeping, and with a sigh of relief she locked the door and went into the bathroom.
She used her cell phone to call True. He answered on the second ring, his voice alert and full of authority, as always.
“Rip checked up on me,” she said. “He knows I wasn’t at either hospital. He even called the patient I said I was meeting.”
“Find someone and let Rip catch you fucking him, and he won’t check any further.”
She closed her eyes at True’s crude reply. The hell of it was, he was right: if she did that, Rip would think he’d solved the mystery and would stop prying. But she’d never cheated on Rip, and she wasn’t going to start now, no matter what he thought or what True said.
“How did things go with Milla?”
“They didn’t.” She could hear the banked fury in his voice, and she knew Milla had reacted just the way she’d expected.
She was too smart to say “I told you so” to True. Instead she said, “She’s obsessed with finding her kid. Nothing else touches her.”
“Not even reason, apparently. I have to have some way of keeping tabs on her. She was never a threat before, but she is now. Who told her about Diaz? I’ve headed her off, but she might decide to do some investigating on her own, and the last thing we need is Diaz in the picture.”
Susanna didn’t know Diaz, but she knew of him. She also knew that True Gallagher wasn’t afraid of the devil himself, but he was wary of this Diaz guy. There was history between them, there had to be. She got the feeling Diaz would be more than happy to do anything that caused trouble for True. Diaz’s reputation was downright scary; if Milla somehow made contact with him and talked him into helping her, they’d have to take steps to protect themselves.
“Feed her some more false leads,” she suggested. “Get her busy chasing ghosts.”
True chuckled. “Good idea.” He paused. “I just realized. It wasn’t your home phone that showed up on Caller ID.”
“I’m on my cell phone.”
“Shit! You know they can be intercepted.”
“If I call from the home phone, Rip can pick up and listen.”
“Then find some other way, but don’t use your cell.” The receiver clanged in her ear.
Grimacing, Susanna ended the call. “Fuck you, too,” she muttered. There she went again with the swearing. She stood for a moment, swaying with exhaustion; she was tempted to fall into bed and shower when she got up, but after what she’d been doing, she didn’t want to go to bed without bathing. She’d washed up before coming home, of course, but that wasn’t the same as an all-over bath. Perhaps this was how Lady Macbeth had felt, scrubbing out invisible spots of blood.
True got out of bed after hanging up on Susanna. He trusted her as much as he trusted most people, but sometimes she could do things that were incredibly stupid. He’d told her over and over, no cell phones or cordless phones. Use landlines. They were safest. He had cordless phones for convenience, of course, but the phones by his bed and in his office were corded.
He’d have to update his security eventually, he thought. Scramblers on his phones. Electronic countermeasures to prevent anyone from eavesdropping with a parabolic mike. Right now, though, he wasn’t a big enough fish for anyone to go to that much trouble to catch him. He was still medium-sized, but growing. He intended to keep on growing. Give him another year, two years at the most, and he’d be able to walk away clean with a sizable fortune that would require overseeing and investing, but would grow under its own momentum.
If he could just get through those couple of years without things blowing up under him.
Milla had never been very worrisome, despite her persistence. He’d made certain no one would tell her anything. He’d kept tabs on her through Susanna and other contacts, and he even—somewhat to his bemusement—admired the way she never gave up. Certainly his own mother had never been that devoted. Eventually, when Milla got into fund-raising for that group of hers, he’d made a point of showing up, contributing, and slowly getting to know her and getting her to trust him. What better way to stay on top of her efforts? He was a sponsor. She talked to him, and though she normally limited her conversation to what Finders was doing, if he asked about her personal situation, she would tell him. He’d made a point of always asking.
The unwelcome surprise was that he liked her.
Hell, he wanted to sleep with her. He wanted her naked. He wanted to tangle his hands in that soft curly hair and hold her while he fucked her. He didn’t understand it, because she wasn’t his usual type. She wasn’t voluptuous, or flashy, or even really pretty. But she had style, and presence, and brown eyes that invited a man to get lost in them.
It would be a bitch if he had to have her killed.
He didn’t want to. For one thing, she was too high-profile. People knew her name, her face, her story. It would be national news if anything happened to her, which meant the cops would go all out on the investigation.
She was enough of a threat that he’d had her watched, had kept watch on her himself, for ten years. He’d minimized her effectiveness, and taking her out now would be like using an elephant gun to shoot a bird. He didn’t want to overreact and bring unnecessary attention his way. There were other ways to keep her in check.
Having an affair with her would have been the best way to keep tabs on her every movement and control the situation until he was ready to get out. He knew she was attracted to him, knew she’d had a couple of short-lived affairs that proved she hadn’t completely given up living. But he’d underestimated the strength of her devotion to her cause, and after the way she’d stiffened in his arms when he kissed her, he had to accept that she wasn’t going to change her mind. If he persisted, he would completely turn her off and she’d stop regarding him as a personal friend.
He’d have to cut his losses there, but he didn’t like it. He’d felt almost like a teenager again, in a lather of anticipation. He saw now that he’d handled things clumsily with that “accidental” meeting
at the restaurant, Susanna knowing she’d have to leave and arranging for a watcher in the restaurant to call her pager as soon as Rip sat down at their table. Very high-school-ish, and Milla had immediately seen through it.
So he’d back off. That didn’t mean he’d give up. Eventually, he’d have her, because he was like her in one critical area: he never gave up.
* * *
Milla noticed when she changed her birth control patch the next morning that she had only a month’s supply left, with no refill, so she made a note to call Susanna’s office and get a prescription called in. She was always careful about birth control because she was aware of the risks she ran of being assaulted. She literally made a note, writing it down, because she didn’t trust herself to remember otherwise. She felt both lethargic and nervous, wiped out from the stress of the night before and yet oddly on edge, waiting for something to happen.
She had slept like the dead. Handling True had been stressful, but Diaz—the short time she’d been with Diaz had left her feeling as if she’d been caught up in a tornado and hurled over half the country before being dumped into an ice-cold bath. Terror, fury, laughter, desire, despair—all had chased through her in rapid succession. The effects of so much adrenaline dumping into her system had left her shaky, and then she’d crashed.
And yet, the first thing she thought of when she awoke was how Diaz had looked crouched before her, smiling in the lamplight. And because she wasn’t completely awake, her imagination had then drifted and placed them in different positions altogether, with him crouched over her, his eyes heavy-lidded and that same small smile on his lips as he slowly penetrated—
She blocked the fantasy, shuddering with delight even though she refused to let her imagination take her any further. That was far enough, anyway, to shock her. She had desired other men before, imagined making love with them. But none of them, not even David, had ever tempted her to veer from the course she had set herself.
Diaz did. Sleeping with him would be a mistake on a personal level, but what scared her was the chaos it could cause in their working relationship. For Justin’s sake, she didn’t dare change their status. And yet, knowing that, she still wanted to, yearned to taste him and touch him and feel him inside her.
Diaz had never kissed her, had scarcely touched her hand, but with one smile he had completely wiped out her memory of True’s taste.
She had to get herself under control before she did something stupid. If she read him right, Diaz would disappear if she got clingy and started making any emotional demands on him, and she didn’t trust herself not to do that. She hadn’t felt this way since . . . well, she’d never felt this way. With David, she had felt absolutely secure in his love. There hadn’t been any reason for emotional insecurity. Diaz, however, was David’s polar opposite, and he might offer her a few things, but emotional security wasn’t in his repertoire.
She was doing what women always did, she realized: obsessing. She should put him out of her mind, concentrate on controlling herself and doing what had to be done every day. The day-to-day business at Finders was way more important than her libido.
While driving to work, she put in a call to Susanna’s office, only to be told, after holding for five minutes while she threaded her way through heavy morning traffic, that Susanna wanted her to come in for a checkup, since it had been two years since the last one.
Damn. Sighing, Milla made an appointment, scribbled the date on her note reminding her to call Susanna in the first place, and hoped she’d be in town to keep the appointment.
The first thing she saw when she entered the office was Brian hanging over Olivia’s desk. But his voice was only a murmur, and his eyes had that intent, sleepy look men got when they—
Her eyes widened, and she shot a disbelieving look at Olivia, who was leaning forward with her arms folded on top of her desk, which pushed her breasts together and upward. She was smiling up at Brian.
So it wasn’t just her, Milla thought. Lust was busting out all over.
Joann stuck her head out of her office. “Amber Alert in Lubbock!”
Within a minute they all had descriptions of the child, a three-year-old girl snatched from her front yard; the vehicle, a dark green, late model Ford pickup; and the driver, white male, early thirties, long blond hair. The Lubbock police would handle the actual apprehension, but Finders called all their associates in the Lubbock area and got them on the streets and highways, armed with cell phones and a description of the truck and driver. People going about their daily business might be listening to tapes or CDs and not hear the alert over the radio, or just be remarkably inattentive to what was going on around them.
Forty-five tense minutes later, the truck was spotted and police notified. The driver, when a cruiser flashed his lights at him, pulled over without fuss. It turned out to be a dispute between a divorced couple, the little girl was his daughter, and not only was she happy to be with her daddy, she began crying when the officers took her away from him.
“People,” Milla said in disgust, lightly banging her head against her desk. “Why do they do that to their kids?”
“Because,” was Joann’s informative answer. Then she caught her breath in an audible gasp. “Guess who just walked in,” she said in a high, squeaky tone.
Milla raised her head, her heart already thumping as she watched Diaz walk toward her office with that catlike tread of his. Heads were turning, watching him, and conversation stuttered to a halt in his wake. Brian stood up, his attention on high alert as he automatically reacted to the presence of a predator in his group. He recognized Diaz, surely, from the search for little Max the week before, but that didn’t seem to make any difference.
Diaz stopped in her office doorway, turning slightly to the side so he couldn’t be approached unawares from the rear. “Let’s take a trip over the border,” he said. His face was set in its usual emotionless mask.
“Right now?”
He shrugged. “If you’re interested.”
She started to ask, “In what?” but he wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t something that concerned Justin.
“I’ll change clothes,” she said, getting to her feet. She was wearing a sundress and sandals.
“You’re fine as you are. We’ll be in Juarez.”
She got her purse, checked to make certain everything she needed was in it, just in case, and said, “Let’s go.”
As they reached the bottom of the outside stairs, he said, “We’ll use my truck,” pointing her toward the dusty blue pickup.
“Are we driving across, or walking?”
“Walking. It’s faster.”
“Should I call and arrange for another car?” she asked as she gathered her skirt and clambered up into the high cab.
“No need. I’ve got another one on the other side.”
“What are we doing? Who are we seeing?”
“Maybe the sister of the man who stabbed you.”
15
They walked across one of the bridges and presented their drivers’ licenses, which was all that was required for tourists staying inside the border free-zone. He hooked his cell phone off his belt and made a brief call; within ten minutes, a grinning teenager drove up in a slightly rusted brown Chevrolet pickup. Diaz passed him a folded twenty-peso banknote, and the teenager tossed him the keys, then turned and took off into the crowd.
This truck sat higher than the other one did, and when she opened the door, she looked for a handle to help her pull herself up. Before she could manage the feat in a skirt, Diaz stepped behind her, put his hands on her waist, and lifted her onto the seat.
She settled herself in the seat and buckled up while he went around and vaulted behind the wheel. She was shaking inside, her nerves knotted. “Maybe the man’s sister?” she asked.
“I don’t know for certain. We’ll find out.” He leaned over and opened the glove box, took out a big, holstered automatic and laid it on the seat beside him.
“How did you f
ind her?”
“It doesn’t matter how,” he said briefly, and she understood. His informants were his own, as were his methods. She didn’t want to look too closely at either.
He deftly navigated through Juarez’s noisy, crowded streets, going deeper and deeper into a neighborhood so rough she didn’t know whether to weep with pity or duck down in the seat and hide. She was glad Diaz was armed, and she wished she were, too. The streets were narrow and crowded, with ramshackle buildings and shanties pressing in on each side, and trash littering the ground. Sullen-faced men and teenage boys stared at her with unconcealed resentment and vicious intent, but when they noticed the man driving the truck, they quickly looked away.
She said, “I think your reputation precedes you.”
“I’ve been here before.”
And done considerable damage, judging from the way these people were reacting to the sight of him.
Battered and rusty vehicles lined the street Diaz drove on now, but he found a gap big enough to wedge the truck in. He got out, strapped the holster around his thigh, and checked how the automatic was seated. Satisfied, he came around the truck and opened her door. After he lifted Milla down from the seat and locked the doors, he made eye contact with a man sullenly watching them from ten yards away, and made a brief motion with his head.
Warily the man approached. “If my truck is unharmed when we return,” Diaz said in rapid Spanish, “I’ll pay you a hundred dollars, American. If it is harmed, I will find you.”
The man nodded rapidly, and took up his sentry position guarding the truck.
Milla didn’t ask if the precaution was necessary; she knew it was. The pistol, however—“Should you wear the pistol out in the open? What if the Preventivos see you?” They were the Mexican equivalent of regular beat cops.
He snorted. “Look around. Do you think they come here very often? Besides, I want it where everyone can see it, and where I can get to it in a hurry.”
The thigh holster made him look like some modern-day outlaw; even the way he walked—loose-limbed, perfectly balanced—seemed like a throwback to some rougher, more violent time. She could easily imagine him with bandoliers crisscrossed on his chest and a bandanna pulled up to cover the lower half of his face.
