Doing It Right (8 page)

He did and slowly got to his feet. But she had lost the urge to flee. “There’s something else I know about you,” he said. “You’re scared shitless, but I’ll be damned if I know what could scare
you
.”

Complete rejection, for a start. Being left alone—again
. She pushed the thought away. “Jared, I’ve told you this before. If you knew me, knew who I really was—what I’ve done, the things I’ve—you wouldn’t like me. You wouldn’t want to be anywhere near me.” She shuddered. “Sometimes I can’t stand to be in my own skin.”

He yawned. She gaped. “Yeah, yeah, you’re a real badass, worse than Manson and Bundy put together.”

Shocked, she opened her mouth to say … what, she didn’t know, but he never gave her a chance. “Hey, you don’t have to tell me a damned thing about yourself if you don’t want to. Like you’ve said, this is business, right? That’s assuming you don’t have feelings for me. Which I would have believed before you let me put my hands all over your luscious bod.”

“That’s not—”

“You weren’t faking, any more than I was—you feel the same thing I do. The connection. The heat.” He poked her in the chest, an umpire making a point to the pitcher. “Difference is,
I’m
willing
to admit it. You’ve been running away from it for days. So which one of us is the fearless bodyguard and which of us is the coward?” He sighed, while she stared at him, stunned. “Too bad, so sad. I didn’t think you were scared of anything or anyone. So disappointing to be wrong about people you care about.”

Kara forced her fist to unclench.
It’s not nice to punch doctors, no matter how outrageously provocative their comments,
she reminded herself. “You don’t know anything,” she snapped. “And you don’t care about me.”

They were nose to nose, or as close as they could get, as she was a head shorter. “Don’t tell me how I feel,” he growled. “You’re fabulous, dammit, and that’s the end of it.”

“You don’t even
know
me.” Her voice cracked with desperation. “Jared, if you knew what I did for a living, the things I had to do to survive, you wouldn’t feel this way.”

His finger came to rest on the tip of her nose. He didn’t smile. “Prove it.”

There was a long silence and then she said it, ignoring the way her heart was pounding crazily, the way her head was screaming,
Are you out of your mind?!

“You got it, Dr. Dean.”

“Uh, Kara.”

“Shhhhh.”

“Kara. This isn’t my house. Or yours.”

“No talking.”

“So this is breaking and entering.”

“Well, yes. Technically.”

“Technically?” he nearly shouted, then remembered he didn’t want to go to jail and lowered his voice. “We’re standing inside a house the size of the Playboy Mansion—”

She snickered. “That’s not far off.”

“—and I don’t even want to know how you cracked that lock. Now there’s little red lasers all over the living room, starting about two feet from where we’re standing.”

“It’s the security system. Don’t walk in there yet.”

“Duh,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “And now you’re futzing with the alarm. Do you think they’ll let me kiss you good-bye before they cart me off to the local hoosegow?”

She ignored him, simply popped the cover off the alarm plate and hooked up a small silver box, about the size of an ATM card. She crossed a few wires, then numbers started to stream across the digital display. A few seconds later, the lasers shut off.

“Cake,” she said, brushing by him. “Don’t touch anything.”

“Thanks. Maybe you should remind me to keep breathing and any other obvious advice you can think of.” He followed her nervously. Prove it, he’d said, and she had taken him right up on it.
Your own fault, moron
.

He’d suspected nothing when she drove them to the house. Hell, he hadn’t even noticed they’d
left his own modest neighborhood for the more pretentious Carleton area, where mansions were as plentiful as street lamps. He’d spent the drive trying to figure out a way to prove to her that her past and her current activities didn’t change the way he felt about her. Hell, her past had shaped the woman he was falling in love with. Far from scaring him off, it just made him feel closer to her.

He was close to her right now, in fact. So close he could have strangled her, which he felt like doing. This was big-time trouble if they were caught. They were both looking at prison terms for the evening’s exercise, all so Kara could prove she was a criminal sociopath.

“I thought you said we were going hacking,” he muttered, following her through the mansion. “I pictured us in a cozy computer room somewhere, pressing buttons. Not hanging around in a living room that looks like it was decorated by the director of the Guggenheim.”

“Hacking doesn’t have much to do with computers these days.” She was climbing the stairs slowly, steadily, not looking back. “It’s B&E-speak for getting into a business to steal from it.”

“But this is somebody’s house. Thirty or forty somebodies, given the size, but still …”

“It’s a business,” she said with maddening mys-teriousness and wouldn’t continue, no matter how much he kept bugging her.

Although the house was empty, the owners had left several lights on, shattering another of Jared’s theories about burglaries. Kara wasn’t a twitchy
junkie with a heroin habit to feed, the “breaking” of the breaking and entering took about ten seconds, and nothing was broken, and there were lights all over the place, so no creeping in the dark like a demented boogeyman. Jared wondered what else popular fiction had wrong about crime.

The bedroom was a joke. Something out of a bad movie—a bed the size of his kitchen, covered with a red satin comforter and about a thousand pillows. Mirrored ceiling. Dark furniture the owner’s family probably brought to America via the
Mayflower
. The carpet—cream shag—was so deep, he could feel himself actually sink into it. The dressers were spotless, except for one large picture of a middle-aged white male, bearded and benevolent looking, with a smile so large, it showed his back teeth. The guy looked like Santa on acid. And, if this was his house, it was kind of in bad taste to have the only photo in the bedroom be of himself.

Bad taste
, Jared thought with grim humor,
sure. Almost as bad as breaking into someone’s house.

There were mirrors everywhere. It was like being trapped in a carpeted disco. Jared could see seven reflections of himself and seven Karas stepping up to a mirror and doing something. And then the mirror was swinging open and …

“Jesus!”

They were in a vault. Kara, her fingers safe in surgical gloves, was opening a drawer and withdrawing a necklace worth, he estimated, the GNP of China.

“You can’t steal that,” he said, trying to sound authoritative, but very much afraid he was whining.

She smiled at him like a cat. It was irritating, he thought, how beautiful she looked even when she was being sly. “Can’t I? If you mean I don’t have the ability, you’re wrong. If you mean my moral code won’t let me, you’re wrong. If you mean I’ll go to jail, you’re wrong again.”

“If I mean it’s rotten, I’m right. Put it back.” She moved to tuck the necklace away and he grabbed her wrist. She raised an eyebrow at him and looked pointedly at his hand, but he didn’t loosen his grip. “Look, you’ve made your point. I see what you do now.”

“Do you?”

“You’re terrible, awful, evil, a real blight on society, I should have listened to you back at the apartment, blah blah. But don’t steal from these folks just to prove me wrong.”

“Open the last drawer on the left,” she said quietly. “Use your shirt sleeve, don’t leave prints.”

“Look, I don’t care how much jewelry they—”

She pried his fingers off her wrist. “Just open it, please, Jared.”

He did. At first his eyes wouldn’t translate what he was seeing. When they did, he blindly put his hand out for something to lean on, certain he was about to be sick. Kara was there, not letting him touch anything, letting him sag against her.

“Those men—”

“And children, yes.”

“Filthy goddamned perverts!”

“Yes, and they’re having terrible luck,” she said sympathetically. He stared at her; she sounded genuinely sorry for them. “The film from their last drop-off was intercepted by the cops. And now they’ve been robbed. When the cops come, they’ll find … this.”

In a flash, he saw her brilliance, saw the trap she had lain for the pedophiles. “The police can’t search without a warrant,” he said slowly, “but if there’s a robbery … and they happen to find pictures, say, all over the hallway …” He paused. “But you’re never caught.”

She grinned at him. “We’re going to trip the alarm on the way out. Cops’ll be here in about five minutes.” She opened another drawer full of filth and waved a spare pair of surgical gloves at him. “Want to help?”

“That was fun,” he said half an hour later, feeling more deeply satisfied than he ever had. Saving lives was fabulous, but preventing the further bru-talization of children was even better. “Now where are we? Is it time for ice cream?”

“Pross house,” she said shortly, getting out of the car and striding, unafraid, through the worst neighborhood in the city. There were more streetlights out than on, more shattered store windows than whole, and entirely too many rough-looking men giving
his
Kara the once-over. Jared could feel
himself bristling and singled out the meanest-looking one for a good glare. “Keep up, please.”

“I don’t like the looks of those guys,” he said, nodding to a gang of thugs clustered under a broken streetlight. “You want I should rough ’em up for you?”

She laughed. “Aren’t you cute. Jared, trust me. Worry about the ones you
don’t
see.”

She bounded up the steps to a battered brown-stone, nodding politely to two teens—either of which could have given your average beat cop a run for her money—and ringing the buzzer. The teens appeared to completely ignore her, but Jared noticed they both made way. He reached out and snagged Kara’s elbow just as she was buzzed in. “I’m with her,” he told the teens, who ignored him as they had Kara, “and don’t get smart or I’ll have her whup you both.”

Inside, he was pleasantly surprised to find a homey entryway. Shabby, but dignified. “Well, this is something,” he said, looking around. “First, the Playboy Mansion. Then the fence—that’s the guy who cashed in the necklace, right? Now we’re … I have no idea where. What’s a pross house?”

“This isn’t a pross house,” a warm, pleasant voice said. Jared jumped and spun; Kara turned unhurriedly toward the voice and Jared realized Kara had known they weren’t alone in the hall. “That’s a place where prostitutes, ah, ply their trade. This is a shelter for soiled doves trying to make new lives for themselves.”

The woman who spoke was astonishingly beautiful, despite the knife scar that bisected her right cheek. Far from detracting from her beauty, the scar served to accent the flawless state of the rest of her face. She had shoulder-length, rich brown hair the color of dark chocolate, eyes the color of a sea lagoon, and skin the color of a really good espresso. She was quite a bit shorter than Kara and if she weighed more than a hundred pounds, Jared vowed to eat the scale.

“Ma’am,” he said politely.

“Madam, actually,” she said, and tittered. “Well, former madam. But you know.”

“Present for you, Meg.” Kara handed her the shoe box in which, Jared knew, there nestled close to half a million dollars.

“Awwww …” Meg caught the box and tucked it under her arm like a football. “And I didn’t get you anything. Who’s the stiff stud?”

“I happen,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster, “to be the young lady’s personal physician. I started by advising her that this neighborhood is bad for her health but—”

Meg brayed laughter, cutting him off. “Her? There’s nothing in this neighborhood bad for A.A. She’s safer here than anywhere.”

Click.
Everything fell into place. But instead of being shocked, he felt like nodding thoughtfully. Shocked? Hell, he wasn’t even mildly surprised. The only reason he hadn’t figured it out earlier was, he’d always thought A.A.—whenever he thought about A.A. at all—was more interested in
lining his or her pocket than protecting doctors from hitmen.

Kara turned to leave. “I’ll see you, Meg.”

“I know. Can’t stay away, can you? Good for us.” Meg’s smirk switched off and she abruptly looked haggard, old. “Bad for you.”

Kara shrugged and left without another word. Jared offered his hand to Meg, who only looked at it, amused. Then he hurried after Kara.

“I’ve got it,” he said on the street.

“Whatever it is, put it back,” she said reasonably, opening the car door and sliding inside.

Jared realized with a start that she hadn’t bothered to lock the car—and it had remained unmolested the entire time they were inside. Well, no wonder. Given who she was.

“You’re the Avenging Angel,” he said, jumping into the passenger seat. “I’ve read about you. You’ve been doing a Robin Hood thing, stealing from the rich and corrupt, then donating the money to homeless shelters and such.” He felt like clapping, he was so pleased at having figured it out. Then it hit him and he didn’t feel like clapping anymore. “But this is terrible.”

“I warned you,” she said quietly, driving back to his apartment.

“This is why you can’t testify against ol’ One Eyebrow. The D.A. is at least as interested in putting you in jail as he is some mob hood. Jesus, there’s—didn’t I read somewhere that there’s a five-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for your capture? The guys you’ve been stealing from put up a pot?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Well, hell, this is totally unacceptable! The D.A. should
thank
you, not issue warrants for your arrest.”

She looked at him. In the poorly lit car, all he could see were her eyes. They were huge. He tried not to yelp as she ran a red light. “What?” she whispered. “What did you say?”

“I said, why don’t you let me drive? Seriously. Kara? What’s the matter?”

She didn’t answer. He didn’t get another word out of her until they were back at the apartment.