Running Scared (23 page)

Las Vegas

November 3

Late afternoon

S
hane closed
his office door behind the LVPD detective who had asked more questions than Risa could answer. When he turned back, Risa was still sitting in the informal conversation area that adjoined his office. Sagging against the sage green cushions, she looked exhausted. Pale skin, smudges under her beautiful eyes, hands lax, even her saucy cap of dark hair looked dull. He suspected he knew why.

And it pissed him off.

“You did everything you could to cover Cherelle’s ass,” he said roughly. “That’s a hell of a lot more than she did for you.”

Warily Risa lifted her chin and looked at Shane. “What do you mean?”

“Your pal turned her key over to a—”

“No,” Risa cut in. “Cherelle loses stuff like keys. She always has. It’s just the way she is.”

“So you’re saying some jerk finds an electronic key somewhere in Las Vegas and just happens to know that it belongs to your room and how to get to that room without asking directions?”

Her mouth opened, then closed. “I can’t explain that part.”

“Then maybe you can explain why you’re so eager to put a halo of innocence around a piece of work like Cherelle Faulkner.”

“That ‘piece of work’ is as close as I come to family,” Risa shot back. “We’re sisters in everything but blood. She wouldn’t set me up like that.”

“You keep saying it often enough, you might convince yourself.”

Risa came to her feet on a surge of adrenaline and rage. “What do you know about friendship? You don’t have any friends! You’re too cold and calculating to know what it’s like to need—” Abruptly she stopped talking and turned away from him. She didn’t want him to see the tears that burned beneath her anger. “I’m sorry. That was way out of line. You go ahead and believe the worst of Cherelle because she dresses sexy and doesn’t spend her time doing good works for charity. Just don’t ask me to sing along with the chorus.”

“You didn’t think I was cold in the elevator,” Shane pointed out with deadly calm. “I’ll concede the calculating part, because I remembered the camera and didn’t fuck you blind for the entertainment of the men on God duty.”

Risa winced at the cutting edge of his voice. Angry, impatient, thoroughly irritated with her. Part of her agreed that Shane had a right. Another part of her wanted to scream that Cherelle was her friend. Her only friend. They’d been through too much together to ever betray each other.

“I can’t believe she sicced that thug on me,” Risa said.

The stiff line of her back and the strain thinning her voice made Shane feel like slime for pushing her. She’d been through enough in the last few hours without him hammering on her about what a double-crossing bitch her childhood friend was.

Silently he walked over and put his hands on Risa’s tense shoulders. She jerked with surprise, then didn’t move again.

“Do you have any idea what went through my mind when I saw that goon pointing his gun at your back?” Shane asked quietly.

She shook her head.

He bent until his lips were a whisper away from the nape of her neck. “If I could have killed him, he would have died where he stood.”

The warmth of his breath as much as the certainty in his words sent a quiver through her.

“And that was before we were lovers,” Shane said. “I don’t know why you have such a hold on me. But you do.”

She took a shivering breath. “Lust. That’s all. Just . . .” Her voice died when she felt the warm tip of his tongue touch her nape once. Lightly. “. . . lust”

“If I thought that, I would have slept with you before I hired you,” he said. “You wanted me the first time we met at Rarities. I wanted you. Easy math, right? A hot week in the sheets, handshakes all around, and off we go on our merry, separate ways.”

“R-right.”

“Wrong.” He tasted her again. Lightly again. He didn’t trust himself to really kiss her. He wanted her now even more than he had earlier. A lot more. Now he knew exactly how good it would be. “It’s deeper than lust. You knew it. I knew it. And we both ran like hell. Can you at least admit that much?”

She wanted to refuse. She couldn’t. “It scares me.”

“Me, too. Then I looked at a monitor and saw that son of a bitch trying to shoot you. I went crazy. I don’t even know how I got to you. All I know is that I’m through running away from whatever it is that pulls us together. I want to . . . help you.”

The thought of Cherelle casually screwing her old friend made Shane want to splinter every bone in Cherelle’s high-mileage body. But he didn’t think Risa was ready to hear that. She might never be.

It was too bad Risa didn’t feel that kind of bone-deep attachment to her lover.

Not that Shane was surprised about the lack of feeling on her part. According to his father and mother, he just wasn’t the lovable sort. So, like his father, he had settled for being rich. Unlike his father, for Shane rich wasn’t enough.

But Shane hadn’t learned that about himself until he saw a thug in a Hawaiian shirt setting up to kill Risa.

“How do you feel about it?” he asked. “Still want to run?”

“No. Yes.” She gave a broken laugh. “I don’t know.”

He could have slid his hands over her, kissed and stroked her until she was the way she had been in the elevator—hot, mindless, ravenous for him. He knew she would burn for him as no other. He wondered if she knew, if that was what she feared as much as she wanted. From what he’d seen of her childhood background, she’d spent as much time denying her feelings in order to protect herself as he had.

“All right.” Shane lifted his hands and turned away. “It’s almost dinnertime. Do you want to eat before we check out your apartment?”

“No.” The word came out raggedly, so she cleared her throat. “No, thanks. You don’t have to come along. No one will be hiding in the closet this time.”

“Too bad.”

She turned around and saw the ghost of a hunter’s smile still on his lips. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. It was as cold as a winter moonrise. For the first time she understood, truly
understood,
that he would have killed for her without a second thought. The idea made her feel odd.

No one, not even Cherelle, had been that protective of her. Ever.

“In any case,” Shane continued, “until the cops catch the man who tried to kill you, you’re not going anywhere alone. Especially to your apartment.”

“He won’t come back.”

“He shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

“He must have followed Cherelle.”

“If he did, he was invisible. Security has run the data from your hallway camera for every hour from two days before Cherelle got the key right up to the present. He only showed up twice. Once on the way in today and once on the way out with you.”

Risa opened her mouth to defend Cherelle again, then realized it wasn’t necessary. Shane wasn’t attacking her friend. He was simply pointing out an unpleasant truth: the man hadn’t followed Cherelle to Risa’s apartment.

My God, Cherelle. What happened to the children we once were?

“Okay.” Risa let out a sighing, hitching breath. “Okay. I’ll try not to take it out on you because I’m scared and angry and full of adrenaline. But . . .” Her voice faded to a whisper. “God, it hurts. I was just trying to give back to her some of what she gave to me when we were kids. A place where no one harmed you. And I still think—I still
believe
that she didn’t set me up. I believe that she’s out there somewhere, running scared, just like we used to do. Only now she’s alone.”

There was nothing Shane could say that would make Risa feel better, so he simply squeezed her shoulders. “Ready to do that inventory for Detective Wilson?”

Without thinking, Risa turned her head and brushed her mouth over one of Shane’s hands. “Okay. Maybe Cherelle left something for me. A note or . . . something.”

Shane traced the line of Risa’s jaw with his fingertips and reminded himself of all the reasons he shouldn’t seduce her right here, right now, right where they stood. And the best reason of all was the fatigue showing beneath her beautiful eyes.

“I want you again,” he said. “I never stop wanting you, even when I can’t get any deeper in you.”

She laid her head against his chest. “It’s the same for me. I don’t know what to do about it.” She sensed as much as heard his laughter. “Okay, I know about that part just fine. It’s the rest that . . . you know.”

“Yeah, I know. Ready for the inventory?”

She blew out a breath. “Sure. At least that’s something I understand.”

Taking her hand, Shane led her to his private elevator and punched in the code. The doors opened and then swiftly closed around them. The thick, specially woven rug was a medley of muted colors that absorbed all mechanical sounds. The paneling was an exotic wood with subtle gold streaks through its grain. The air was fresh, smelling of high mountains and swift streams.

Sighing, Risa felt some of her sadness slide away. The elevator was a soothing oasis in the middle of business and fear and uncertainty. All too soon the doors opened, and she found herself staring out at her own hallway. She blinked, orienting herself.

“Isn’t this marked as a service elevator?” she asked.

Shane smiled. “Yes.”

“Sneaky.”

He laughed and released her hand to nudge her out into the hallway. He felt the tension return to her spine when a man dressed in casual clothes walked toward them.

“Don’t worry,” Shane said in a low voice. “I’ve put extra security on this floor. He’s one of ours.”

“Evening, sir, ma’am,”

Shane nodded to the guard. “How’s it going?”

“Quiet.”

“Good.”

The plainclothes guard ambled off down the hall, looking for all the world like a man with nothing on his mind but a night gambling in the casino.

“Is it evening already?” Risa asked, then glanced at her watch. “Yes, I guess it is.” Her mouth turned down as she thought of the cops going over and over her story. “My, how time flies when you’re having fun.”

“Yeah. Don’t know how much more of it my heart can take.”

She stopped in front of her apartment, reached into her narrow skirt pocket, and came up empty. “I don’t have my key. I must have lost it when I tried to get away from him. Or in the other apartment when we, uh . . .”

He gave her a smoky, remembering kind of glance.

Heat shot through her.

Without a word he pulled a slim plastic rectangle from his wallet. The electronically coded key fitted neatly into the slot. The door opened. He handed the key card to her.

“New code. If you lose or loan it, let security know,” Shane said. “Anybody using that card who isn’t with you will get a lot of armed attention real quick.”

Risa started to answer, then saw the mess beyond him. She walked into the room and stood with her fists on her hips. “Well, hell. I was hoping I was wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought my mind was playing tricks and no mess could be this bad. Wrong again. How am I supposed to find out if anything is missing when nothing is where it’s supposed to be?”

The fact that she was already striding toward her bedroom told Shane that she didn’t expect an answer. She did a lightning check of electronics and found the TV, DVD, CD/radio/clock, and computer all in place. Mostly. The computer apparently had been thrown across the room. Clothes—ripped and wadded—covered the TV and made a big mound in the center of the bedroom floor. Shoes were scattered like confetti throughout the rooms.

She did a swift turn through the bathroom and kitchen. Big mess. Nothing obvious missing. Her grocery list was still stuck to the refrigerator with a grinning, bright green frog magnet.

Shane was in the bedroom, surveying the chaos.

“All the electronics are here,” she said.

He plucked a midnight blue lace bra off a lampshade. He had discovered matching panties in the bathtub.
Next time I’ll definitely take it slow. Sliding lace off her skin is worth going slow for.
He carefully folded the silky underwear and set it on top of a dresser that was missing all its drawers. They were facedown where they’d been thrown.

“What about jewelry?” he asked.

She shook her head. “The stuff I want is too expensive.”

“So you go without?”

“I spent my childhood with second and third best and hand-me-downs from charities. If I can’t afford what I want today, I wait until I can.”

“What do you want?” he asked quietly. He would get it for her.

“It’s all in museums.” She looked at the upended mattress and for the first time noticed the slash marks where the man had taken a knife to the fabric. “I’m thinking he was pissed off.”

Shane followed her glance and felt both ice and anger slide into his veins. “I’m thinking you’re right.”

“He was looking for something I didn’t have.”

“Celtic gold.”

She stared at the mess. “Much as I don’t like it, I have to agree.”

“While you’re being agreeable, think about trusting me a little more.”

She turned and gave him a startled glance. “I trust you.”

“Do you? Then why didn’t you tell me that Cherelle had some knockout Celtic gold artifacts for sale?”

“Because she didn’t tell me.”

“Interesting.” Without knowing it, he got his gold pen from the pocket of his sport coat and began walking the slim gold over his fingers while he sorted through possibilities and probabilities with a speed that had made more than one person uneasy.

Risa wasn’t bothered. She liked knowing that he was more than a pretty face and a fine body. Next time she would have to get more than the essential parts of him naked. She bit her mouth against the smile that wanted to settle in. A few minutes with Shane had been better than hours with any other man. It would have made her nervous if it hadn’t felt so damned right.

“Did she know what you do for a living?” Shane asked finally.

“Yes. But until this last time she never asked me any questions about my work.”

“So we can assume she came to you because of your knowledge about ancient gold artifacts rather than an overwhelming desire to touch all the childhood bases.”