Stars of Mithra Box Set: Captive Star\Hidden Star\Secret Star (6 page)

 

Jack woke wrapped in female. He smelled her first, a tang, just a little sharp, of lemony soap. Clean, fresh, and simple.

He heard her—the slow, even, relaxed breathing. Felt the quiet intimacy of shared sleep. His blood began to stir even before he felt her.

Long, limber limbs. A shapely yard of leg was tossed over his own. One well-toned arm, with
skin as smooth as new cream, was flung over his chest. Her head was settled companionably on his shoulder.

M.J. was a cuddler, he realized, and smiled to himself. Who'd have thought it? Before he could talk himself out of it, he lifted a hand, brushed it lightly over her tousled cap of hair. Bright silk, he mused. It was quite a contrast to all that angled toughness.

She sure had style. His kind of style, he decided, and wondered what direction they might have taken if he just walked into her pub one night and put some moves on her.

She'd have kicked him out on his butt, he thought, and grinned. What a woman.

It was too bad, too damn bad, that he didn't have time to try out those moves. Because he really wanted another taste of her.

And because he did, he slid out from under her, stood and stretched out the kinks while she shifted and tried to find comfort. She rolled onto her back and flung her free hand over her head.

The restless animal inside him stirred.

He grabbed it in a choke hold and reminded himself that he was, occasionally, a civilized man. Civilized men didn't climb onto a sleeping woman and dive in.

But they could think about it.

Since it would be safer all around to think about it at a distance, he went into the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face and considered his next move.

 

In dreams, she was holding the stone in her hand, wondering at it, as streams of sunlight danced through the canopy of trees. Instead of penetrating the stone, the rays bounced off, creating a flashing whirl of beauty that stung the eyes and burned the soul.

It was hers to hold, if not to keep. The answers were there, secreted inside, if only she knew where to look.

From somewhere came the growl of a beast, low and feral. She turned toward it, rather than away, the stone protected in the fist of her hand, her other raised to defend.

Something moved slyly in the brush, hidden, waiting, searching. Hunting.

Then he was there, astride a massive black horse. At his side was a sword of dull silver, its width a thick slab of violence. His gray eyes were granite-hard, and as dangerous as any beast that slunk over the ground. He held a hand down to her, and there was challenge in that slow smile.

Danger ahead. Danger behind.

She stepped forward, clasped hands with him and let him pull her up on the gleaming black horse. The horse reared high, trumpeted. When they rode, they rode fast. The blood beating in her head had nothing to do with fear, and everything to do with triumph.

She came awake with her heart pounding and her blood high. She was in the dim, cramped motel room, with Jack shaking her shoulder roughly.

“What? What?”

“Nap's over.” He considered kissing her awake, risking her fist in his face. But it would be too distracting. “We've got places to go.”

“Where?” She struggled to shake off sleep, and the silky remnants of the dream.

“To visit a friend.” He unlocked the cuffs from the headboard, snapped them on his own wrist, linking M.J. to him.

“You have a friend?”

“Ah, she's awake now.” He pulled her outside, into a misty dusk that still pulsed with heat. “Get in and slide over,” he instructed when he opened the driver's side door.

She was still groggy enough that she obeyed without question. But by the time he'd started the
engine, her wits were back. “Look, Jack, these handcuffs have got to go.”

“I don't know, I kind of like them this way. Did you ever see that movie with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier? Great flick.”

“We're not escaped cons running for a train here, Dakota. If we're going to have a business relationship, there has to be an element of trust.”

“Sugar, you don't trust me any more than I trust you.” He steered out of the pitted lot, kept to the speed limit. “Look at it this way.” He lifted his hand, causing hers to jerk. “We're both in the same boat. And I could have just left you back there.”

She drummed her fingers on her knee. “Why didn't you?”

“I thought about it,” he admitted. “I could move faster without you along. But I'd rather keep my eye on you. And if things go wrong and I can't get back, I'd hate for you to have to explain why you're cuffed to the bed of a cheap motel.”

“Damn considerate of you.”

“I thought so. Though it's your fault I'm flying blind. It'd be easier if you'd fill in the blanks.”

“Think of it as a challenge.”

“Oh, I do. It, and you.” He slanted her a look.
“What's this guy got, M.J.? This
friend
of yours you'd risk so much for?”

She looked out her window, thought of Bailey. Then pushed the thought aside. Worry for Bailey only brought the fear back, and fear clouded the mind and made it sluggish.

“You wouldn't understand love, would you, Jack?” Her voice was quiet, without its usual edge, and her gaze passed over his face in a slow search. “The kind that doesn't ask questions, doesn't require favors or have limits.”

“No.” Inside the emptiness her words brought him curled an edgy fist of envy. “I'd say if you don't ask questions or have limits, you're a fool.”

“And you're no fool.”

“Under the circumstances, you should be grateful I'm not. I'll get you out of this, M.J. Then you'll owe me fifty thousand.”

“You know your priorities,” she said with a sneer.

“Yeah, money smooths out a lot of bumps on the road. And I say before you pay me off we end up in bed again. Only this time it won't be to take a nap.”

She turned toward him fully, and ignored the quick pulse of excitement in her gut. “Dakota,
the only way I'll end up in the sack with you is if you handcuff me again.”

There was that smile, slow, insolent, damnably attractive. “Well, that would be interesting, wouldn't it?”

Wanting to make time, he swung onto the interstate, headed north. And he promised himself that not only would he get her into bed, but she wouldn't think of another man when he did.

“You're heading back to D.C.”

“That's right. We've got some business there.” In the glare of oncoming headlights, his face was grim.

 

He took a roundabout route, circling, cruising past his objective, winding his way back, until he was satisfied none of the cars parked on the block were occupied.

There was pedestrian traffic, as well. He'd sized it up by his second pass. Deals were being made, he mused. And that kind of business kept people moving.

“Nice neighborhood,” she commented, watching a drunk stumble out of a liquor store with a brown paper sack. “Just charming. Yours?”

“Ralph's. We're only a couple blocks from the courthouse.” He cruised past a prostitute who was
well off the usual stroll and pulled around the corner. “He likes the location.”

It was an area, she knew, that even the most fearless cabbies preferred to avoid. An area where life was often worth less than the spit on the side walk, and those who valued theirs locked their doors tight before sundown and waited for morning.

Here, the graffiti smeared on the crumbling buildings wasn't an art form. It was a threat.

She heard someone swearing viciously, then the sound of breaking glass. “A man of taste and refinement, your friend Ralph.”

“Former friend.” He took her hand, obliging her to slide across the seat when he climbed out.

“That you, Dakota? That you?” A man slipped out of the shadows of a doorway. His eyes were fire red and skittish as a whipped dog's. He ran the back of his hand over his mouth as he shambled forward in battered high-tops and an over coat that had to be stifling in the midsummer heat.

“Yeah, Freddie. How's it going?”

“Been better. Been better, Jack, you know?” His eyes passed over M.J., then moved on. “Been better,” he said again.

“Yeah, I know.” Jack reached in his front
pocket for the bills he'd already placed there. “You could use a hot meal.”

“A hot meal.” Freddie stared at the bills, moistened his lips. “Sure could do with a hot meal, all right.”

“You seen Ralph?”

“Ain't.” Freddie's shaky fingers reached for the money, clamped on. He blinked up when Jack continued to hold the bills. “Ain't,” he repeated. “Musta closed up early. It's a holiday, the Fourth of Ju-ly. Damn kids been setting off firecrackers already. Can't tell them from gunshots. Damn kids.”

“When's the last time you saw Ralph?”

“I dunno. Yesterday?” He looked at Jack for approval. “Yesterday, probably. I've been here awhile, but I ain't seen him. And his place is locked up.”

“Have you seen anybody else who doesn't belong here?”

“Her.” Freddie pointed at M.J. and smiled. “She don't.”

“Besides her.”

“Nope. Nobody.” The voice went whiny. “I sure been better, Jack, you know.”

“Yeah.” Without bothering to sigh, Jack turned the money loose. “Get lost, Freddie.”

“Yeah, okay.” And he hurried down the street, around the corner.

“He's not going to buy food,” M.J. murmured. “You know what he's going to buy with that.”

“You can't save the world. Sometimes you can't even save a little piece of it. But maybe he won't mug anybody tonight, or get himself shot trying to.” Jack shrugged. “He's been dead since the first time he picked up a needle. Nothing I can do about it.”

“Then why do you feel so lousy about it?” She lifted a brow when he looked down at her. “It's all over your face, Dakota.”

“He used to have a family” was all he said by way of an answer. “Let's go.” He led her up the street, then ducked down the side of a building. To her surprise, he unlocked the cuffs. “You've got more sense than to take off in this neighborhood.” He smiled. “And I've got your rock locked in the trunk of my car.”

“On a street like this, you'll be lucky if your car's still there when you get back around.”

“They know my car. Nobody'll mess with it.” Then he turned—whirled, really—and made her jolt as he slammed two vicious kicks into a dull gray door.

She heard wood splinter, and pursed her lips in
appreciation as the door gave way on the third try. “Nice job.”

“Thanks. And if Ralph didn't get cute and change the code, we're in business.” He stepped inside, scanned an alarm box beside the broken door. With quick fingers he stabbed numbers.

“How do you know his code?”

“I make it my business to know things. Move aside.” With a strength she had to admire, he hauled the broken door up, muscled it back into place. “Ralph should have gone for steel. Too cheap.”

He flicked on the lights, scanned the tiny space that was crammed with file boxes and smelled of must. M.J. watched a mouse scamper out of sight.

“Charming. I'm very impressed with your associates so far, Dakota. Would this be his secretary's year off?”

“Ralph doesn't have a secretary, either. He's a big believer in low overhead. Office is through here.”

“I can't wait.” Wary of rodents and anything else with more than two legs, she watched her step as she followed him. “This is what they call nighttime breaking and entering, isn't it?”

“Cops have a name for everything.” He paused with his hand on a doorknob, glanced over
his shoulder. “If you wanted someone who'd knock politely on the front door, you wouldn't be with me.”

She lifted her arm, rattled the dangling handcuffs. “Remember these?”

He only shook his head. “You wouldn't be with me,” he repeated, and opened the door.

She sucked in her breath, but it was the only sound she made. Later, he would remember that and appreciate her grit and her control. The back-wash of light from the anteroom spilled into the closet-size office.

Gunmetal-gray file cabinets, scarred and dented, lined two walls. Papers spilled out of the open drawers, littered the floor, fluttered on the desk under the breeze of a whining electric fan.

Blood was everywhere.

The smell of it roiled in her stomach, had her clamping her teeth and swallowing hard. But her voice was steady enough when she spoke.

“That would be Ralph?”

I
t had been a messy job, Jack thought. If it had been pros, they hadn't bothered to be quick or neat. But then, there'd been no reason for either. Ralph was still tied to the chair.

Or what was left of him was.

“You can wait in the back,” Jack told her.

“I don't think so.” She wasn't a stranger to violence. A girl didn't grow up in a bar and not see blood spilled from time to time.

But she'd never seen anything like this. As realistic as she considered herself, she hadn't really believed it was possible for one human being to inflict this kind of horror on another.

She kept her eyes on the wall, but stepped in beside him. “What do you think they were after?”

“The same thing I am. Anything that leads back to whoever used Ralph to set us up. Stupid son of a bitch.” His voice softened all at once, with what could only have been termed regret. “Why didn't he run?”

“Maybe he didn't have the chance.” Her stomach was settling, but she continued to take small, shallow breaths. “We have to call the police.”

“Sure, we'll call 911, then we'll wait and explain ourselves. From the inside of a cell.” Crouching down, he began shuffling through papers. “Jack, for God's sake, the man's been murdered.”

“He won't be any less dead if we call the cops, will he? Never could figure out Ralph's filing system.”

“Haven't you got any feelings at all? You knew him.”

“I haven't got time for feelings.” And since they were trying to surface, his voice was rough as sand. “Think about it, sugar. Whoever did this to him would love to play the same game with
you. Take a good look, and ask yourself if that's how you want to end up.”

He waited a moment, then accepted her silence as understanding. “Now you can go in the back room and save your sensibilities, or you can help me sort through this mess.”

When she turned, he assumed she'd walk away. That she might keep on walking, no matter the neighborhood. But she stopped at a file cabinet, grabbed a handful of papers. “What am I looking for?”

“Anything.”

“That narrows it down. And why should there be anything left? They've already been here.”

“He'd keep a backup somewhere.” Jack hissed at the snowfall of papers. “Why the hell didn't he use a computer like a normal person?”

Rising, he went to the desk, wrenched out a drawer. He searched it, turning it over, checking the underside, the back, then tossing it aside and yanking out another. On the third try, he found a false back.

His quick grunt of approval had M.J. turning, watching him take out a penknife and pry at wood. Giving up her own search, she walked to him. By tacit agreement with him, she gripped the
loosened edge and tugged while he worked the knife around. Wood splintered from wood.

“It's practically cemented on,” Jack muttered. “And recently.”

“How do you know it's recent?”

“It's clean. No dust, no grime. Watch your fingers. Here, you take the knife. Let me…” They switched jobs. He skinned his knuckles, swore, and continued to peel the wood back. All at once it popped free.

Jack took the knife again, cut through the tape affixing a key to the back of the drawer. “Storage locker,” he muttered. “I wonder what Ralph has tucked away.”

“Bus station? Train station? Airport?” M.J. leaned closer to study the key. “It doesn't have a name, just a number.”

“I'd go with one of the first two. Ralph didn't like to fly, and the airport's a trek from here.”

“That still leaves a lot of locks on a lot of boxes,” she reminded him.

“We'll track it down.”

“Do you know how many storage lockers there must be in the metropolitan area?”

He turned the key between his fingers and smiled thinly. “We only need one.” He took her
hand, and before she realized his intent, he'd cuffed them together again.

“Oh, for God's sake, Jack.”

“Just covering my bases. Come on, we've got work to do.”

 

At the first bus station, he'd grudgingly removed the cuffs before dragging M.J. into a phone booth, and making an anonymous call to the police to report the murder. Then he carefully wiped down the phone. “If they've got caller ID,” he told her, “they'll track down where the call was made.”

“And I take it your prints are on file.”

He flashed a grin. “Just a little disagreement over pool in my misspent youth. Fifty dollars and time served.”

Because he'd shifted, she was backed into the corner of the booth, pressed to the wall by his body. “It's a little crowded in here.”

“I noticed.” He lifted a hand, skimmed back the hair at her temple. “You did all right back there. A lot of women would have gotten hysterical.”

“I don't get hysterical.”

“No, you don't. So give me a break here, will you?” He tipped her face up, lowered his head.
“Just for a minute.” And he closed his mouth over hers.

She could have resisted. She meant to. But it was an easy kiss, with need just a whispering note. It was almost friendly, could have been friendly, if not for the press of his body to hers, and the heat rising from it.

And an easy, almost friendly kiss shouldn't have made her want to cling, to hold on and hold tight. She compromised by fisting a hand on his back, not holding but not protesting.

If her lips softened under his, warmed and parted, it was only for a moment. It meant nothing. Could mean nothing.

“I want you.” He murmured the words against her mouth, then again when his lips pressed to her throat. “This is a hell of a time for it, a hell of a place. But I want you, M.J. I'm having a hard time getting past that.”

“I don't go to bed with strangers.”

“Who's asking you to?” He lifted his head, met her eyes. “We've got each other figured, don't we? And you're not the kind of woman who needs fussy dates or fancy words.”

“Maybe not.” The fire he'd kindled inside her was still smoldering. “Maybe I haven't figured out what I need.”

“Then think about it.” He backed off, then took her hand and pulled her out of the booth. “We'll check the lockers. Maybe we'll get lucky.”

They didn't. Not in that terminal or in the next two. It was nearly one in the morning before he pocketed the key.

“I want a drink.”

She let out a breath, rolled her shoulders. After twelve hours in a waking nightmare, she could see his point. “I wouldn't turn one down. You buying?”

“Why not?”

He steered clear of any of the places where he might be recognized and chose instead a dingy little dive not far from Union Station.

“Good thing I've had my shots.” M.J. wrinkled her nose at the sticky, stamp-size table and checked the chair before she sat.

“It was either this or a fern bar. We can check out Union Station when we've had a break. Two of what you've got on tap,” he told the waitress, and cracked a peanut.

“I don't know how places like this stay in business.” With a critical eye, M.J. studied the atmosphere. Smoke-choked air, a generally stale smell, sticky floor littered with peanut shells, cigarette
butts and worse. “A few gallons of disinfectant, some decent lighting, and this joint would turn up one full notch.”

“I don't think the clientele cares.” He glanced toward the surly-faced man at the bar, and the weary-eyed working girl who was casing him. “Some people just come into a bar to engage in the serious business of drinking until they're drunk enough to forget why they came into the bar to begin with.”

She acknowledged his comment with a nod. “That's the type I don't want in my place. You get them from time to time, but they rarely come back. They're not looking for conversation and music or a companionable drink with a pal. That's what I serve at my place.”

“Like father, like daughter.”

“You could say that.” M.J.'s eyes narrowed in disapproval as the waitress slammed down their mugs. Beer sloshed over the tops. “She wouldn't last five minutes at M.J.'s.”

“Rude barmaids have their own charm.” Jack picked up his beer and sipped gratefully. “I meant what I said earlier.” He grinned when her gaze narrowed on his. “About that, too, but I meant how you handled yourself. It was a tough room, M.J., for anybody.”

“It was a first for me.” She cleared her throat, drank. “You?”

“Yeah, and I don't mind saying I hope it's my last. Ralph was a jerk, but he didn't deserve that. I'd have to say whoever did that to him enjoyed his work. You've got some real bad people interested in you.”

“It looks that way.” And those same people, she thought, would be interested in Bailey and Grace. “How long do you figure it'll take to find the lock that fits that key?”

“No telling. Knowing Ralph, he wouldn't go too far afield. He hid the key in his office, not his apartment, so odds are the box is close.”

But if it wasn't, it could be hours, even days, before they found it. She wasn't willing to wait that long. She took another gulp of beer. “I need the rest room.” When he narrowed his eyes, she smirked. “Want to come with me?”

He studied her a moment, then moved his shoulders. “Make it fast.”

She didn't rush toward the back, but her mind was racing. Ten minutes, she calculated. That was all she needed, to get out, get to the phone booth she'd seen outside and get through to Bailey.

She closed the door of the ladies' room at her back, scanned the woman in black spandex primp
ing in the mirror, then grinned at the small casement window set high in the wall.

“Hey, give me a leg up.”

The woman perfected a second coat of blood-red lipstick. “A what?”

“Come on, be a pal.” M.J. hooked a hand on the narrow sill. “Give me a boost, will you?”

Taking her maddening time, the woman slid the top back on her tube of lipstick. “Bad date?”

“The worst.”

“I know the feeling.” She tottered over on ice-pick heels. “Do you really think you can squeeze through that? You're skinny, but it'll be a tight fit.”

“I'll make it.”

The woman shrugged, exuded a puff of too-sweet designer-knockoff perfume and cupped her hands. “Whatever you say.”

M.J. bounced a foot in the makeshift stirrup, then boosted herself up until she had her arms hooked on the sill. A quick wriggle and she was chest-high. “Just another little push.”

“No problem.” Getting into the spirit, the woman set both hands on M.J.'s bottom and shoved. “Sorry,” she said when M.J. cracked her head on the window and swore.

“It's okay. Thanks.” She wiggled, grunted,
twisted and forced herself through the opening. Head, then shoulders. Taking a quick breath, trying not to imagine herself remaining corked in the window, she muscled her way through with only a quick rip of denim.

“Good for you, honey.” M.J. stayed on her hands and knees long enough to shoot her assistant a quick grin. Then she was off and running. She dug in her pocket as she went for the quarter habitually carried there.

She could hear her mother's voice.
Never leave the house without money for a phone call in your pocket. You never know when you'll need it.

“Thanks, Ma,” she murmured, and reached the phone booth at a dead run. “Be there, be there,” she whispered, plugging in the coin, stabbing numbers.

She heard Bailey's calm, cool voice answer on the second ring and swore as she recognized the recorded message.

“Where are you, where are you?” She clamped down on panic, took a breath. “Bailey, listen up,” she began, the instant after the beep. “I don't know what the hell's going on, but we're in trouble. Don't stay there, he may come back. I'm in a phone booth outside some dive near—”

“Damn idiot.” Jack reached in, grabbed her arm.

“Hands off, you son of a bitch. Bailey—” But he'd already disconnected her. Using the confines of the booth to his advantage, he twisted her around and clamped the cuffs on so that her arms were secured. Then he simply lifted her up and tossed her over his shoulder.

He let her rant, let her kick, and had her dumped back into the car before a single Good Samaritan could take interest. Her threats and promises bounced off him as he peeled away from the curb and shot down side streets.

“So much for trust.” And where there wasn't trust, he thought, there had to be proof. Cautious, he doubled back, scouting the area until he found a narrow alley half a block from the phone booth. He backed in, shut off the lights and engine.

Reaching over, he vised a hand around the back of her neck, pulled her face close. “You want to see where your phone call would have gotten us? Just sit tight.”

“Take your hands off me.”

“At the moment, having my hands on you is the least of my concerns. Just be quiet. And wait for it.”

When his grip loosened, she jerked back. “Wait for what?”

“It shouldn't take much longer.” And, brooding into the dark, he watched the street.

It took less than five minutes. By his count, a little more than fifteen since her call. The van crept up to the curb. Two men got out.

“Recognize them?”

Of course she did. She'd seen them only that morning. One of them had broken in her door. The other had shot at her. With a quick tremor of reaction, she shut her eyes. They'd traced the call from Bailey's line, she realized. Traced it quickly and efficiently.

And if Jack hadn't moved fast, they might very well have snapped her up just as quickly, just as efficiently.

The smaller of the two went into the bar while the other stood by the phone booth, scanning the street, one hand resting under his suit jacket.

“He'll pass the bartender a couple of bucks to see if you were in there, if you were alone, how long ago you left. They won't hang around long. They'll find out you're still with me, so they'll be looking for the car. We won't be able to use it anymore around here tonight.”