Twilight (10 page)

Dana gestured toward Ken’s office. “You call that doing things by the book?”

He shrugged. “Thorough searches get messy.”

“Not when I do them,” Dana countered.

His gaze narrowed at that. “Meaning?”

She decided it might be best if he didn’t know that she was launching her own investigation and that it had gotten more urgent in the past half hour.

“Nothing,” she said.

He didn’t look as if he believed her, but he apparently decided to let it pass.

“I know you want to believe in your husband, Mrs. Miller. The rest of you, too, but the truth is, it looks as if the Chicago police were onto something.”

“What?” all four people in the room chorused in disbelief.

“You can’t be serious,” Rick said.

Dana felt a huge knot forming in the pit of her stomach. Something was going on here, something dark and dangerous and far more complicated than she’d ever imagined.

“What did you find?” she asked softly.

“Traces of marijuana, a small amount of cocaine and evidence that he’d had crack tucked away, too,” he said unhappily. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, sweet heaven,” Mrs. Fallon murmured, and sank back onto her chair.

“It was planted,” Kate said with absolute certainty.

“You bet your life it was,” Dana agreed. She shot a venomous look straight into Detective Dillon O’Flannery’s eyes. “You said traces of drugs were found. How much?”

“Not a lot,” he admitted. “Just enough to prove it had been there.”

“Not enough to cost anyone big bucks, right? Not enough to put a dent into a real drug operation?”

“No.”

“Just enough to make him look guilty of some crime,” she concluded. “If that doesn’t suggest planting, I don’t know what would. And I intend to prove it, or die trying.”

Despite her trembling knees, she managed to stand and then to walk out the door, head held high. She would not cry in front of Detective O’Flannery. She would not let him see how deeply she was shaken by what he’d said. The thought of so much as a trace of all those drugs in Ken’s office made her sick to her stomach.

She felt Kate slip up beside her.

“Are you okay?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“I will be,” she said stiffly. “As soon as I see them all in hell for what they’re trying to do to my husband.”

10

A
s soon as they were out of sight of Detective O’Flannery, Dana whirled on Rick and slapped him with all of her might. Frustration, blind rage, hurt all went into that slap. The force of the blow felt exhilarating. Rick’s eyes widened with surprise, but to his credit he held his temper, even as a red mark in the shape of her hand took form on his cheek.

“Mind if I ask what that was for?” he inquired.

“You’re the one responsible for this,” she accused, refusing to massage her stinging hand or to apologize for using it to strike him. “If Ken had never gotten involved with you, he wouldn’t be dead and none of this would be happening.”

She was tempted to smack him again, but Kate apparently sensed her intention and slipped an arm around her waist as they walked into the house and began murmuring soothing reminders about using honey, not vinegar, to catch flies. The comment was practical, so very much Kate, that Dana managed a faint smile. Her temper calmed. A vague hint of embarrassment stole over her. She had never resorted to physical assaults in her life, but she’d slapped Rick twice now. Obviously, the man did not bring out the best in her.

“Okay, okay, no more physical abuse,” she promised.

“Glad to hear it,” Rick said, gingerly touching his jaw. “Are you ready to go into Chicago now?”

Dana had forgotten all about the plans that had obviously brought him to the church in search of her in the first place. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t going, that she was going to stay right where she was and think about what the detective had told them, but she couldn’t. The answers, including those to this latest twist, were still at Yo, Amigo. They had to be. Someone there, possibly even Rick himself, had set her husband up. With the police adding up false information, suppositions and planted drugs, finding the truth was more critical than ever.

“Just let me freshen up,” she said to buy herself a few minutes to compose herself. She couldn’t spend five minutes alone with Rick in her current frame of mind or, despite her very recent promise, they’d wind up in a ditch somewhere with her trying to pummel him to death.

“If you’d like,” she told him, “you can put the cameras and other equipment in the car. Everything’s by the front door. I’m afraid I never made it to the drugstore to get extra memory cards, though.”

When he saw the gathered photographic supplies, he seemed surprised that she’d done as much as she had. “No problem. We’ll stop on the way.” He glanced at Kate. “Are you coming along?”

Kate looked toward Dana, as if awaiting some sort of signal. Dana said, “No, she can’t. She has things to do here.”

Rick nodded. “Good to see you again, Mrs. Jefferson. Dana, I’ll be in the car, whenever you’re ready.”

As soon as he’d gone outside, Kate whirled on her. “What things do I have to do here? Are you sure you ought to be alone with that man? There are enough sparks flying between you two to light up downtown Chicago. Why can’t you just meet the man halfway?”

“I just can’t, that’s all. I don’t trust him,” Dana said defensively. Nor was she willing to admit that she feared letting down her guard for so much as a second around him. Right now, thank goodness, she wanted to kill him, not sleep with him. She wasn’t so sure that would last forever, though. At the moment, she’d be grateful just to get through the rest of the day without making a fool of herself.

“Okay, so don’t trust him. Just be nice.” At a sharp look from Dana, Kate held up her hands. “Okay, okay, what do you want me to do?”

“Finish going through that list of church members and check off anyone whose name sets off any sort of alarms.”

“Such as?”

“Rumors about a sudden change in lifestyle, nasty tempers, shady business dealings, whatever. Anything you’ve heard that might seem remotely suspicious. If you finish that, try going to the newspaper morgue to see if any of the names show up in articles related to any kind of corruption, drugs, excessive parking tickets, whatever.”

“I take it we can exclude those receiving media accolades.”

Dana thought about that. “Not necessarily. If they’ve gotten any kind of positive publicity, maybe they’d go to some extremes to avoid having their reputation tarnished.”

“That’s pretty twisted logic,” Kate said.

“We’re dealing with a pretty twisted mind. This person not only killed a minister, but he’s trying to frame him in a drug conspiracy and throw the police offtrack.”

“Okay,” Kate agreed, accepting the theory. “I’ve got it. What time do you want to get together?”

Dana thought of the trip to and from Chicago, the class she was scheduled to teach. They were already running late. As much as she wanted to know what Kate learned tonight, she knew she’d be too exhausted to absorb it.

“Unless you stumble on something urgent, come over in the morning,” she suggested eventually.

“I’ll leave a message for you if I find out anything that can’t wait until morning,” Kate promised. “Now run along. It’s not good to keep an impatient man waiting.”

“If it were up to me, he could wait until hell freezes over,” Dana muttered. But she turned and left just the same.

She slid into Rick’s car without speaking. Despite her earlier fury, she felt a renewed surge of guilt when she saw that his cheek still bore traces of her slap. She had never believed that violence solved anything. She had never, ever resorted to it herself. She’d never even gently swatted one of her kids to make a point.

She could blame her behavior on stress, but that would be excusing the inexcusable. She vowed then and there to do as Kate had asked and force herself to give Rick Sanchez a break. She was lucky that he was still speaking to her after the way she’d treated him. He could have reneged on his promise to help her earn the trust of the kids at Yo, Amigo and she would have had no one to blame but herself. There were plenty of allies in the world who didn’t like each other. She supposed the two of them could fit into that category.

Rick pulled out of the driveway and headed toward Chicago, without breaking the silence. He seemed neither angry nor upset, merely thoughtful.

When she could stand the silence no longer, Dana decided to take the first step in achieving détente. “I’m sorry I slapped you,” she said softly.

“I know.”

“I wasn’t angry with you so much as the circumstances. It was really Detective O’Flannery I wanted to hit.”

“I know.”

She frowned at him. “You don’t know everything, Sanchez.”

He glanced toward her and shrugged. “Maybe not everything,” he conceded. “But when it comes to you, I think I know quite a lot. I saw the way you kept clenching and unclenching your fists while O’Flannery was talking. Frankly, I wouldn’t have minded taking a shot at the man myself.”

“I wish you had,” she said wistfully.

“We’ll get whoever’s behind all this, Dana. I promise you that.”

She listened to the conviction in his voice and wished she could believe him, wished even more that she could trust him. Unfortunately, she doubted she would ever entirely rid herself of the possibility that he was involved in this investigation only so that he could cover any tracks that might lead back to Yo, Amigo.

If she was wrong, though, then Rick suddenly had motives almost as powerful as her own for wanting to know who was behind not only Ken’s death, but the defamation of Yo, Amigo’s reputation.

* * *

He had to be insane, flat-out, men-in-white-coats insane. From the moment he’d tackled Dana Miller during her middle-of-the-night quest inside Yo, Amigo, Rick had been so aware of her, so aroused by her that he could barely think straight in her presence.

And all the while his body was humming with electricity, his mind was reeling with guilt. This was Ken’s wife, for God’s sake. Ken’s widow, he amended with a sigh. And that, somehow, made the lust he was feeling that much worse.

After each encounter, he vowed to rein in his feelings. He was finally forced to accept that it was like trying to rein in a runaway stagecoach. It could be done, but it required almost superhuman, John Wayne–caliber effort.

Even so, even knowing that he was tempting fate by spending one single second in her presence, here he was, drawing her deeper and deeper into his world. The stupidity of it nagged at him all during the drive into Chicago. His only consolation was the fact that Ken had believed in Yo, Amigo as deeply as Rick did. He would not want to see it brought down as a part of any investigation of his murder.

Ken would also want the people who’d been closest to him—Dana and Rick himself—to work as a team, not as enemies. They needed to be united, if they were going to fight what appeared to be an intricate conspiracy surrounding his death.

The drug charge leveled by that detective was so outlandish that Rick had trouble taking it seriously. But he knew in his gut that it was as serious as a bullet in the chest. Whoever had planted those drugs and leaked their presence to the police was determined not only to sully Ken’s name, but to bring down Yo, Amigo. If Rick got to that person before the police did, the court system was going to have to wait in line to mete out justice. After he finished, prison would probably look good to the creep.

He glanced over at Dana as he turned into the tiny parking lot beside a neighborhood drugstore to pick up the supplies she needed. She seemed lost in thought. He was finally coming to realize what Ken had known all along, that she was a loyal, admirable woman. Despite all that crap that Detective O’Flannery had thrown at her, she had never once lost faith in her husband. Rick couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have someone believe in him so thoroughly.

Few people ever had done so. Certainly not the immigrant parents who’d given up on him when he’d turned to gang life because of the sense of power and belonging it gave to him in this strange new country. Surely not the cops, who’d prayed for just one slip, just one charge against him they could make stick. Even his own followers hadn’t believed in him with that kind of blind faith. He’d just happened to be the one who’d ascended to a position of power because he was a little bigger, a little tougher than the rest.

Ken, however, had believed in him from the start. Even though he was still struggling to turn his life around when they’d met five years ago, even though Yo, Amigo was little more than an idea, it was an idea that Ken had embraced. He’d had the finesse that Rick lacked to pull the program together. Rick had had the street smarts to attract a few toughened kids into the program, but Ken had been able to handle the power brokers, to squeeze dollars out of empty city coffers. The program existed today because they had trusted and respected each other.

Even so, that wasn’t the same as having the trust and respect of a woman. Rick wasn’t sure why that was so, only that when he’d seen that firm belief shining in Dana Miller’s eyes, he had envied Ken more than he could say.

“What kind of memory cards do you need?” he asked when he’d pulled into a parking space.

“I’ll run in and get them,” she said at once.

“I’ll go,” he countered, just as firmly. “My turf, remember?”

The corners of her mouth twitched in the beginnings of a smile. “We’ll go together so I can see what they have. Will that suit you?”

Rick nodded. “I’m relieved to see that you can compromise.”

“How about you? Can you compromise?”

“Of course.”

She regarded him skeptically. “Sorry. I don’t see it.”

“Don’t see what?”

“You ever backing down, once you’ve taken a stance. You’re too arrogant, too bullheaded.”

He grinned. “I’ve grown rather fond of you, too.”

She scowled at that. “It wasn’t a compliment.”

“I know.”

They were still bickering as they bought the memory cards and returned to the car. Nonsense bickering. Bickering that to Rick seemed almost to border on the affectionate. There was no more venom in it. It was as if that vicious slap had finally cleared the air between them and made peace possible.

“You know, Dana, if you’re not careful, you and I might actually wind up being friends.”

“No way,” she muttered hastily.

A little too hastily, it seemed to Rick. He wondered how long it would take her to accept the possibility that animosity and distrust could evolve into friendship. He could envision it, just as he could almost envision a day when they would become lovers. No doubt suggesting that would earn him another slap, despite the truce they had declared.

Still, he couldn’t help wondering what would happen if he bridged the distance between them and kissed her the way he wanted to, deeply and thoroughly. Would she slap him for that, too, or would she melt in his arms?

The temptation to find out was almost irresistible. Fortunately, though, he had a lot of practice at resisting temptation. He’d had to curb his once healthy appetite for petty theft. He’d had to tame his violent temper, even in the face of provocation like that scene in Ken’s office earlier.

Surely, he could resist the compelling urge to kiss a woman whose heart belonged to someone else, a woman who wouldn’t even admit to liking him.

Of course, that was the point, he thought wryly. He wanted to force an admission that she wasn’t as immune to him as she claimed.

“Are you planning to start the car any time soon, or shall I get out and walk the rest of the way?” she inquired tartly, breaking into his thoughts.

He noticed that she was shifting uncomfortably under his gaze. He found that telling enough, for the moment. The kiss could wait awhile longer, he concluded.

But it wouldn’t be too much longer. Minutes, maybe. Hours. Days. A few months at most. Time for him to make sure that more was involved here than his always healthy libido. Not even a saint could be expected to show much more restraint than that. And the word on the street had been pretty consistent about one thing for years now: Rick Sanchez was no saint.