First You Run (10 page)

She scooped up her hair with two hands. He was right behind her now but still not touching.

She felt his breath trailing down her spine, then lower, and he dipped behind her. His breath warmed her skin, the heat of him just centimeters from the flesh of her bottom and thighs, intense, unrelenting, close.

And still he didn’t touch her.

A single drop of feminine moisture rolled down the inside of her leg. She closed her eyes, tried to squeeze the wetness back, but the tightening muscles sent a sensation of sex right back inside her. The pull of an orgasm coiled up to her womb, shocking her with its force and the possibility.

He still hadn’t touched her.

She put a hand over her mouth, closed her eyes, and squeezed again, astonishingly close to climax.

“I was right,” he said, something odd in his tone.

She turned, her moist tuft eye level with him. He dipped his head to the side, and for a moment, she thought he was going to taste her. Heat clenched tighter, knowing she’d come the instant his tongue touched her.

She lifted shaky hands to take his shoulders and steady herself, ready for the onslaught of his mouth, but he stood so suddenly and fast that she almost stumbled back.

“You were right about what?” she asked in a strained voice.

“You’re beautiful. Every…single…inch of you.”

“Adrien. You don’t…have to…leave.”
Then touch me.

He cupped her jaw, lifting her face toward his. The touch, so gentle after the scorch of his visual caress, surprised her. “I told you I wanted to go to Los Angeles with you. And I will. If I can help you find whoever is threatening you, I will.”

“And then?”

He let out a frustrated sigh. “I have a job to do, and it can’t be done in LA.”

It was some consolation that he looked as pained as she felt.

“I understand,” she said.

He shook his head. “Actually, you don’t understand at all.”

She stepped back as realization slammed her in the chest. “Do you have…is there another…”

“Another woman?”

She nodded.

His smile was wry. “In a manner of speaking.”

Oh
. She’d never considered that possibility. “Well, you get points for honesty. And fidelity.”

He pulled another bath towel off the wrap, covering her. “I have been honest about how beautiful you are. And I’ve told you from day one that this little interlude was not just about sex.”

Not even when she offered it and he wanted it. He tightened the towel across her chest and dropped a gentle kiss on her forehead. “Let’s go to Los Angeles, luv.”

When he left, Miranda looked in the mirror, at the face of a woman who’d just been royally rejected. Rejection hurt a lot. But it hurt less than fear, and for that reason alone, she’d let him come with her.

She got back into the lukewarm water and finished her bath. Alone.

T
HE STREETS OF
Westwood Village bustled with the beautiful people out to see and be seen on a Sunday night. The enclave of high-end boutiques, gourmet eateries, and red-carpet-ready movie theaters on the outskirts of UCLA was peppered with glamazons too perfect to be real, followed closely by packs of hot guys, stunning matched-set couples, and a few wide-eyed tourists. It seemed as if everyone was on a cell phone or talking to nearly invisible ear buds, and very few actually spoke English. Miranda heard Spanish, German, and quite a bit of Arabic from the glitzy crowd.

“I can’t imagine any of these people coming to Westwood to go into a bookstore, let alone one featuring nonfiction about the Maya,” Miranda said to Adrien, who maintained constant, maddening physical contact with her as they walked.

“Your book isn’t about the Maya,” he corrected. “It’s about misperceptions and expectations. It’s about the impact of the ancients on us.”

She smiled up at him, delighted. “You’ve been reading.”

He shrugged. “A few chapters here and there. Don’t worry, luv, you’ll have a crowd.” He steered her around two teenage girls who might have been peeled from a spread in
Vogue
. “Especially after that masterful live interview on TV today.”

She wished his compliments didn’t make her so warm inside, but they did. Just like the strength of his arm around her, the smell of soap and shampoo, the sound of his ridiculously attractive accent.

She glanced at her watch. “It’s only eight o’clock, and the reading doesn’t start until nine. Let’s get ice cream for dessert.”

“Ice cream? Most folks need a pint of ale before a public appearance.”

“I’ll have a glass of wine when I’m done. Now I need comfort food.”

He tucked her closer under his arm, a move so natural and affectionate that Miranda almost slid her own arm around his waist, until she noticed him glaring at someone who had his eye on her.

“You don’t feel like you eat enough comfort food,” he said as the man looked away. “But we have to go early to do a security check. I want to know where every exit and entrance are, and where you’ll be standing and signing and how close I can be to you. And check out the customers and see if I’ll have to convince any crazies to leave. So, the ice cream will have to wait.”

“I really appreciate this…Fletch.”

He cringed and punched his heart. “Buggers. I’ve been demoted.”

“Not really,” she said. “Think of it as a step forward in our friendship. Or whatever a bodyguard calls a person he’s protecting.”

“Principal. Tonight, you are my principal.”

“And what do your principals call you?”

“The best in the business.”

She laughed softly. “Then I’m in good hands.”

He turned them off the boulevard to a side street and walked to the one-story brick building with a simple sign that read bruin books.

Miranda knew something was strange the minute they walked into the deserted bookstore. The cash register and a table stood empty, as did the tight rows of bookshelves beyond. There was no signing area. No podium, no chairs. No patrons. No copies of
Catclysn’t
anywhere.

“Hello?” Miranda called, peering between the shelves. “Is anyone here?”

A door squeaked from the back. “Be right there,” a female voice replied.

A few seconds later, a young Asian woman with a long ponytail ambled through the stacks, her arms full of books.

“Sorry about that,” she said with a smile as she unloaded the pile onto a single stuffed chair in the front area. “Can I help you?”

Miranda checked out her name tag. “Hi, Ophelia. I’m Miranda Lang.”

“Uh-huh.” She gave a quick glance at Adrien, then back to Miranda. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

Adrien’s expression matched the sinking sensation in her gut. Something wasn’t right here. “I’m supposed to do a reading and signing. My book is
Cataclysn’t
.”

Ophelia’s jaw dropped. “It was canceled.”

Could she have the date wrong? The location? “My publisher set it up weeks ago. It’s scheduled for tonight at nine o’clock.”

“I know, I saw it on the calendar, but…” She frowned, and shook her head. “I was working when the call came in that said you couldn’t make it. And my boss was pissed, because he had, like, two hundred copies of your book.”

Had?
“Who called? Was it Debbie Shervey at Calypso Publishing? She’s the publicist arranging all this.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t get the name. I thought you were the chick who called.”

Miranda’s chest tightened. “When did this happen?”

“Like about three days ago?” she said in classic California up-talk. “The guy came and got the books yesterday.”

“What guy?” Adrien asked.

She shrugged again. “I have no clue who he was. But he bought every one of the two hundred books, in their boxes, put them in a pickup truck, and left.”

“How did he pay?” he asked. “Do you have a check number or credit card?”

“He paid in cash,” she said. “All hundreds, and it was, like, four thousand bucks!”

“Would your publisher do that?” Adrien asked Miranda. “Would they cancel a signing and repurchase the books?”

“No. And if they did, for whatever bizarre reason, Debbie would call me.” But it was too late to call anyone in New York now, especially on a Sunday night.

Why did this keep happening? Why was every event…sabotaged?

Disappointment and unease burned low in her belly. “All right, then,” Miranda said softly. “I guess there’s no reason for us to stay.”

“I’m totally sorry,” the young woman said. “Whoever called, um, said your whole trip was canceled, that you weren’t doing any of the tour.”

Miranda drew back. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. She said the book was tanking big-time, and sales were really bad. My boss was kind of relieved when that guy came in here to buy all those books. He thought we’d be stuck with them or have to, like, remainder the whole lot.”

What was going
on
? “Is your boss here? The owner or a manager?”

The kid shook her head. “I’m alone tonight. But I could call him. Do you want me to?”

She glanced at Adrien, who was staring up at the ceiling. “That a camera?” he asked.

“Oh, it doesn’t work. It’s just there for, like, show.”

“And you have no record of the bloke who paid with all the hundreds? Didn’t even issue him a receipt for the cash?”

“Just a sales receipt from the register. No name or anything. Sorry.”

He pointed to a stack of boxes, none of them labeled. “And you’re sure they’re not in those cartons?”

“Positive,” she said. “Those are a bunch of used textbooks some students just dropped off.”

As soon as they got outside, Miranda said, “It’s the crazies. They want this book to go away, and they’re one step ahead of me.”

“Someone is,” he agreed, heading back toward Westwood Boulevard and the parking garage where they’d left the Range Rover. “I wonder if the ten thousand books up at Canopy are all of the books you were supposed to sign on this tour.”

The possibility of that hit hard. “I won’t let them do this to me,” she ground out. “They can cancel my signings, but I’ll just call and set them up again. They can buy all my books, but that will just force my publisher to print more. They can’t do this.”

“Good girl,” he said, taking her hand as they crossed the intersection. “That’s what you need to do. Get mad, not scared. But don’t be”—his gaze, always scanning the area around them, suddenly stopped—“stupid, either.”

She looked at the crowd. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said, but the tone wasn’t convincing. He put his left arm around her, tightly. “Come on. To the parking garage.”

“What is it?” she repeated. “What did you see?”

“Let’s get to the car.” He pushed her faster, checking across the street as they broke into a near run.

“I have a right to know,” she demanded, working to keep up with his long strides. “What or who is over there?”

“A familiar face,” he said, hustling them faster, then turning into the street entrance for the covered parking garage.

“Who?”
She wanted to look over her shoulder, but he didn’t give her the chance.

He practically sprinted to the car, parked at street level. “Remember the guy who started all the problems at your signing up in Berkeley?” He clicked the keyless entry and pulled the passenger door open, urging her in.

“The one with the wild eyes who stood on his chair and raised hell?”

“You know him?”

“No, I never saw him before that reading at the Page Nine. I thought of him as Wild Eyes because he looked crazed when he started ranting.”

“Interesting.” He cocked his head in the direction of the street. “’Cause he’s down there, cruising Westwood Boulevard.” He slammed her door shut.

Here? In LA? Why?

Adrien pulled himself into the driver’s seat and turned the engine on. “He’s your link.”

“To the crazies?”

“I don’t know,” he said, backing out of the parking spot. “But he’s in both places you are. There’s got to be a reason.”

“Let’s find out.”

He shot her a look. “In my line of work, we generally don’t go driving into danger. We try to avoid it.”

“I understand that for security, but I want to know who he is, what he’s doing here, and why my book signing was mysteriously canceled. So let’s follow him.”

He shook his head. “It’s not safe.”

“If we can get some answers, maybe we can stop them. Get them arrested or something. I’d feel so much safer…when I’m alone.”

He winced. “Foul play, Miranda.”

“So is letting me go off across the country being followed by Wild Eyes, who wants to ruin every single one of my appearances. You can help me. Now.” She squeezed his arm. “Hurry, Adrien, before he’s gone.”

“Oh, so now I’m Adrien again.” He turned onto the main drag and hit the accelerator hard.

Fletch drove slowly past the outdoor restaurant, ignoring the bunyip in his head growling,
Don’t
. Or was that Lucy’s warning, reminding him how dangerous it was to act without thinking through the consequences?

Screw it—he owed Miranda this much. She had no identifying mark, and she wasn’t Eileen Stafford’s long-lost daughter. He’d start hunting down the next woman tomorrow. If they could root out the enemy tonight and scare the crap out of him, maybe she’d be safe to travel alone.

He scanned the street where he’d seen the guy.

“Any sign of him?” she asked. “All I can remember about him is that he had light hair, pale skin, and…”

“Wild blue eyes. There he is.” Adrien pointed at a sidewalk café, where a half-dozen outdoor tables were filled with patrons in their mid-twenties with nylon packs and cups of designer coffee. “The third table from the right, near the building. In the navy shirt.”

She threw an admiring glance at Adrien. “You’re good. I never would have seen him.”

“He was definitely the leader of the melee at your reading. All of the others looked at him before they talked, did you notice?” He slipped into a handicapped spot about twenty feet away. “Let’s see where he goes from here.”

The position gave them a direct shot of Wild Eyes, close enough to observe but not so close that he’d see them. He sipped his coffee and periodically answered or made a call on a cell phone, then pulled a handheld computer out of his backpack and fiddled with it. And then a book. But not just any book.

“Interesting choice of reading materials,” Fletch said.

“Cataclysn’t.”
She gave a half-laugh of incredulity. “I don’t believe it.”

Wild Eyes bit the cap off a Sharpie and started scratching all over the page. He flipped a few pages, wrote some more, then tore out a page, crumpled it into a ball, and shot it into a trash can three feet away.

“He’s probably the guy who bought my books from Bruin Books, just to keep them off the market. Can you believe that?”

“No.”

She whipped around. “You don’t?”

“Listen, they buy into this whole imminent-end-of-the-world deal, right?”

“Right.”

“So what the hell do they care if you don’t? As far as they’re concerned, it’s all going to end whether you’re right or you’re wrong.”

“True, but they want followers and support, so they see my findings as a direct conflict. I’m the voice of sanity they don’t want to hear.”

“But why do they want followers and support? For what? There has to be more to it.” Fletch put his hand on her slender arm. “It’s got to involve sex or money. When there’s a coordinated effort like this, it’s money. But sometimes its sex. Or both. That’s what drives everyone and everything.”

She narrowed her eyes in disbelief. “Not revenge? Jealousy? Hatred? Ambition?”

“All ancillary or somehow related to sex or money. People want more of both, no matter how much they have.”

“Drugs?”

He shrugged. “The user isn’t the baddie, the seller is. And he’s doing it for money. So, whoever is bashing your books and buying them out, they want sex or money.”

“You’re missing a huge one. Religion is one of the biggest motivators of violence in history. Ask any suicide bomber. Oh, he’s up.” She pointed to their target.

Wild Eyes had stood suddenly, his phone pressed to his ear. He threaded his way through the tables and to the street.

“Stay with him,” Miranda said excitedly. “See where he’s going.”

Fletch pulled out of the parking spot into traffic, staying in the far right lane about twenty feet behind their target. When he suddenly jaywalked across the street, Fletch zipped across two lanes and followed him to one more corner.

“The bookstore,” they said at the same time.

“It’s nine o’clock now,” Miranda added. “Maybe he has no idea it’s canceled, and he intends to visit and make trouble like he did up in Berkeley.”

“Maybe.” Fletch stayed well behind, letting Wild Eyes hustle along, repositioning his heavy backpack as he headed to the store. The entire time, he kept a phone to his ear. When he reached Bruin Books, he went inside.

“Now what?” Miranda asked. “He’s going to come out in five minutes when he finds out it’s not happening. Damn, he’s
not
the one who canceled it.”