Doing It Right (12 page)

He’d brought his car to a smoking stop in front of a fire hydrant and all but leapt onto the cracked sidewalk. He’d charged up the stairs to Meg’s place, only to find his way blocked by three husky teens, any one of whom would have been a formidable opponent.

He hadn’t cared. Clenching his fists, he’d snarled, “Out of the way, boys. I’m a doctor. I can hurt you in ways you can’t begin to imagine.” Which hadn’t impressed them, he was annoyed to note, but one of the boys had recognized him as the man who’d shown up with the Avenging Angel the day before and told the other two to back off.

Jared had strutted past them. “That’s right, punks. Touch me and the Angel will have your braces for Christmas tinsel. She worships the ground I walk on, you know.”

He had ignored the hoots that greeted this statement. He’d also ignored the parting advice of one—”Stay out of this, homely.”

“That’s ‘homey,’” he’d muttered back, only to hear more laughter.

Now he was faced with Meg, who wasn’t any more help than the boys had been. “Don’t you understand? She’s in this mess because of me. She’s taking on Carlotti because of
me
.”

“My, aren’t you the powerful one. Didn’t think anybody could get Angel in a mess without her say so.” She gave Jared a long, pitiless look. “And there’s no mess she’s in that you won’t make worse. You’re not one of us, doc. You’re a citizen. I bet you even pay taxes.”

“Thanks for reminding me, and by the way, it’s not a dirty word,” he snapped. “And I’ve had quite enough of the ‘you wouldn’t understand you’re not one of us’ bullshit. Just because I didn’t grow up around the corner doesn’t mean I don’t know about trouble.”

Meg was silent. They both looked up when the door to the entryway opened and a girl—a kid, no more than thirteen, probably—entered, carrying two glasses of ice water. She handed them to Meg, gave Jared a brief, uninterested, look and left the room.

“Have something to drink,” Meg said at last, handing Jared a glass. “You probably need it. Running all over the place like an idiot. You know, Kara won’t thank you for butting in.”

Relief made his knees want to buckle; he willed himself to stand straight. Meg had said Kara wouldn’t thank him, which sounded an awful lot like the canny former prostitute had knowledge she was going to share. “
I
won’t thank you,” he said quietly, “if something happens to her because I’m not there to help. Especially when you know where she is.”

“I don’t know exactly, I only have a guess. I didn’t have time to warn her about Krystal,” she said,
sounding annoyed, “and that’s the only reason I’m telling you anything. If I thought she had the whole story, I wouldn’t say shit and there wouldn’t be a thing you could do about it, pretty boy.”

“Warn her?” he asked sharply.
Definitely don’t like the sound of that, oh no
.

“I wasn’t here when Krystal left with her. Kara can take care of herself, but Krystal’s a snake and snakes bite everybody, even snake handlers.”

Mystifying, but interesting. Jared nodded encouragingly.

“I was about a day away from kicking her skinny ass out of here. She was trouble from the start. Not because of what she’s been through, what she’s done. She’s trouble because she likes it. I can’t put up with that. Won’t.”

Well. Any woman a tough cookie like Meg didn’t like definitely bore watching. Suddenly realizing how thirsty he was and realizing he wasn’t going anywhere until Meg had her say, he drained his water glass and gagged on the lemon slice before spitting it back among the ice cubes.

Meg sighed and he had a moment of sympathy for her. The woman was getting ready to do things that went against everything she had ever learned. She was going to trust a stranger, she was going to help that stranger interfere in street business, and she was as much as admitting the infamous Avenging Angel needed help. Big-time sins, where she and Kara had come from.

He didn’t care. Concern for Kara drove out consideration for Meg’s moral dilemma. If he had to,
he’d throttle the information out of the woman and to hell with anyone who might get in his way.

“I don’t know for sure,” Meg said at last. “But there’s a warehouse Carlotti’s been using lately. Krystal was busted there last week, but the cops only hauled her in, nobody else in the gang. You might want to try there. It’s down by the waterfront. Third and Lancaster. You can’t miss it, it takes up the whole block.”

“Good-bye,” he said, putting down his glass and turning to leave. Meg reached out, flash-quick, and snagged his elbow. Jared was astonished at the smaller woman’s strength. He could have broken her hold, but it would have taken effort, as well as precious time.

“Freeze, Dr. Doofus. Do you have a plan? I mean, besides barging through the front door and getting shot in the face?”

“No. That was pretty much my plan. Let go, will you? You’re cutting off the circulation.”

“You in the market for some advice, citizen?”

“Absolutely.”

“Some of my girls. They get sick a lot. Too many years standing on street corners, you’ll catch everything, you know?”

Jared nodded. He did know. Prostitutes were easy prey for just about any bug that came along. Many of them were afflicted with chronic colds, viruses, and the tunnel honeys developed emphysema in a distressingly short time from exposure to car exhaust.

“Well,” Meg was saying, “they don’t like to go to
the clinic. The wait’s long, they have to sit through lectures from people who don’t know shit about the life, and if you don’t have insurance it’s—”

“A nightmare of paperwork and bureaucratic indifference,” Jared finished. “How about I make some housecalls for you? Maybe two or three times a month?”

“Dara!” Meg yelled, startling him, and the same girl who had brought their drinks reappeared. She was actually, Jared noticed, much younger than early teens. He didn’t want to think about the circumstances that had led her to a home for retired prostitutes. “We still got those boxes left over from last night’s supper?”

“In the alley.”

“We also need to borrow one of your birthday presents. The one I got you for a joke.”

Dara almost smiled. The child reminded him of a younger, more solemn Kara. “Be right back,” she said, turning to leave.

“Assuming you don’t get killed, doc—which you probably will—I’ll expect you here a week from today to give some of the girls a checkup.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I don’t think your presence will make a damn bit of difference,” Meg went on ruthlessly, “but you never know. If nothing else, you might make a good distraction. So here’s what I suggest you do …”

T
here was another knock on the door. “Who the hell is that?” Carlotti asked, perplexed.

He was right to be perplexed, Kara thought. This wasn’t a neighborhood where one knocked. Certainly the police wouldn’t bother. And anyone who belonged in this warehouse was here right now. So who was it?

“Girl Scout cookie time already?” she asked brightly.

“Shut the hell up. Joey, go open the door.”

Joey did, first freeing his semi-automatic and holding it loosely in his gun hand. Kara noticed he hadn’t bothered to ratchet a bullet in the chamber, a fact which cheered her immensely. How nice to know that Carlotti, a monumental idiot, still chose to surround himself with fellow morons. She almost laughed aloud and got ready.

Her mood had dramatically shifted and she wondered at it. And in another half-second she was able to put her finger on the reason for her sudden high spirits. For once in her life, she wasn’t acting like a rat in a trap, wasn’t wondering how best to scuttle away and live to thieve another day. Now she was thinking like an assassin. It was unsettling, but nice to be thinking about something besides how to run.

Joey unbolted the door and swung it open. It groaned on heavy hinges which cried out for oil, revealing …

Jared.

“Pizza?” Joey asked.

Kara closed her eyes. The stress had finally gotten to her. All those years of living by her wits, of cheating death—and various arresting officers—had finally caught up with her; in this moment of extreme peril, she was hallucinating.

“Yeah, that’s sixty-nine ninety-five,” Jared was saying. Kara opened her eyes. It
was
Jared. Dressed in a red jacket, a red cap, and jeans. Perhaps most surprising, he was carrying six large pizza boxes.

It wasn’t an actual delivery uniform, she realized, but the bold colors—coupled with the pizza boxes—tricked the average observer into thinking he was a delivery boy.

“We didn’t order no pizzas!” Carlotti shouted. “So get the hell lost!”

“What?” Jared yelled back. “Dude, if you don’t pay, it gets taken outta my paycheck!”

“But we didn’t—”

“So you’re payin’! I gotta pepperoni extra cheese, I gotta meatlover’s special, I gotta vegetarian, I gotta sausage onion mushroom, I gotta cheese—”

“But we didn’t order any pizza,” Joey said, still trying to puzzle this out. Kara could practically read the man’s torturous thought process—We should be beating the crap outta the bimbo, instead we’re talking about pizza? Wha?

“Sixty-nine ninety-five, man, let’s go, I’m double parked.” Suddenly, shockingly, he hurled the pizza boxes at the bad guys, who had loosely clustered around Joey, and yelled, “Run, Kara!”

Joey’s elbow came up, blocking, but it did no good—the boxes went everywhere, their tops popping open and spilling their load. To her astonishment—and Kara had thought nothing more would surprise her this day—she saw the boxes were filled with dozens and dozens of marbles.

Pandemonium. Joey was the first to fall, hitting the cement floor so hard his gun was jarred from his grip. Jared snatched it from the floor, cat-quick, then pointed it at Carlotti with wildly trembling aim, squinched his eyes shut, again yelled, “Kara, dammit, run!” and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened, of course; she doubted Jared knew how to pump a cartridge in the chamber. Frankly, she was surprised he’d known which end to point at Carlotti. But it didn’t matter; it was his purehearted effort that counted. He’d risked everything to come here, the moron, and had been ready to violate his healer’s oath to save her life.

She had no trouble keeping her balance on the treacherous floor; it took stamina and concentration, both of which she had in spades. She was at Jared’s side in an instant, pulling the gun from his grip and throwing it as hard as she could. She knew more about guns than her lover—almost anyone would—but she had always concentrated on the martial arts, never feeling the need to bring a gun along on her hacks. Besides, she had noticed before that those who were good with guns often depended on them to the exclusion of everything else.

Three of the goons were scrambling on the floor like dazed crabs. Marbles were still rolling everywhere. One of the thugs had racked his knee as he’d fallen and he was not at all interested in getting up and joining the fray. Instead, he rocked back and forth on the floor, his lips skinned back from his teeth, holding his knee with both hands. Kara heard a click and shoved Jared out of the way just as the air exploded with sound.

“The idiots don’t even have silencers,” she muttered, flinging a pizza box at another bad guy’s head. During his flinch she kicked his legs out from under him and yanked the gun away hard enough to break two of his fingers. The small crackling sounds—and the significantly louder scream of the creep who’d actually
shot
at
Jared
—were infinitely satisfying. For a moment, she was sorely tempted to empty the clip into the goon’s head and almost smiled—she hadn’t been nearly so furious at the danger to her own life.

Joey had gotten to his knees, only to topple over as Jared dealt him a vicious kick to the kidneys.

Kara broke a chair over another one, kicking his gun across the floor, where it skittered beneath a table. She looked around, grinning and unable to stop. Chaos reigned. In less than thirty seconds, the situation had radically changed. Now it was no longer a question of “Gee, I hope I can kill Carlotti before he kills me”. Now there was no doubt. She would kill him and end this. There was time to do one of two things—save herself, or do what should have been done years ago.

No contest.

She started toward Carlotti, who was trying to help two of his men up at the same time, urging them to “get her, shoot her, fuckin’ get her, dammit!” too much a coward to take her on alone. He wasn’t armed—he’d been planning to beat her to death—and she was still grinning, could feel the expression on her face and knew it wasn’t a nice smile, but oh, she wanted his death so badly, wanted Jared safe forever and now, now it was going to be done, it finally—

Someone tackled her from behind; it was like being taken down by a diesel truck. She got her arm up in front of her face before her nose connected with the cement floor, then felt herself lifted quickly and hustled toward the door at the back of the room. She got a whiff of Jared’s aftershave and in a moment of perfect understanding realized what he had done. And what he had prevented her from doing.

“Jared, let
go
! I can’t let the opportunity go by, I can’t run away from this! You idiot, you’re ruining everything!”

“Wrong, blondie,” he said, and the tricky bastard didn’t even sound out of breath. He had one of her arms twisted into the center of her back and was propelling her so firmly and quickly, it was all she could do to keep her feet.

They left the chaos of the main room behind them and, to the stunned mobsters, it must have seemed that they disappeared into the shadows.

“Y
ou idiot!” she hissed as he yanked her into a small storage room. She got a brief glimpse of a short counter, some mops, and a few pails before he closed the door. She stood perfectly still, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark while he stumbled around, feeling for something to block the door. “You—you might have been killed!” Never had she felt so many conflicting emotions—anger, relief, giddiness, fear. “I left you in bed for a reason, you know. I—”

He shushed her scolding with a long kiss, then lifted her and placed her on the counter. She wondered how he could see a thing in the dark and was a little annoyed, frankly.
She
was the fly-by-night cat burglar, for heaven’s sake—it was ridiculous that she had been cursed with lousy night vision.