An Eye for Danger (2 page)

Come on, come on. Get up
. I might as well have been leaning on the ropes of a boxing ring, I grew so charged. Their battle could be over a woman's love or stolen loot for all I cared, but I knew that giving up killed your soul first, your body last.

Bear Man retrieved something from the pile of leaves as I stood rock still and shushed Max. Any decent New Yorker would run the other direction, but I hated an uneven fight, hated bullies even worse. My dog may have been the most important guy in my life, but an underdog was a sure second. That and some desperate part of me still believed one person could make a difference in this lousy world. But without a cell phone I couldn't call the cops and, even if I did, by the time police arrived late tomorrow, the worst would be done.

And things looked like they were about to get much, much worse.

By the time Bear Man returned, that belly laugh sending shock waves of dread through me, Sam had managed to prop onto one knee again, tilting furiously.

Max writhed within my hold, his feet scratching at the pavement. I was barely hanging on to his collar. I looked to my tree, then to the man on his knees. Missions changed, even in battle.

Instinctively, I stepped forward, willing Sam to his feet. "Get up, damn it."

He caught my movement and stiffened, staring downhill at me.

Then Bear Man's head snapped my direction.
Oh, shit.

I froze. Max lunged, breaking from my grip and barking a hailstorm of threats as he rocketed toward the men. And when Max's bark boomed, he got attention.

Sam scrambled to his feet, as Bear Man moved to intercept the bellowing dog charging him full force.

"Max, come!" I raced uphill, lengths behind my dog. Another bite to a human by Max and he could get put down. If Bear Man didn't execute the job himself. With his bare knuckles.

I charged. No one touched my dog.

Whatever air I'd been struggling to capture before came in gusts now, my lungs expanding and contracting like an Olympian's, my full-out sprint closing the distance.

Max snarled, springing in small motions toward Bear Man's knees. If the thug moved an inch, Max would strike. Then I realized half the growls were coming from Bear Man. If Max struck, the man would move in for the kill.

At least their standoff gave Sam time to run. But the idiot just waited, watching.

"Naughty dog." I caught Max's collar and laughed, pretending innocence. "You're on heel," I said, then pulled Max backwards, unable to quell his snarling, barking fury. And not really wanting to.

Max writhed and twisted, pinching my fingers within his collar. His teeth were fully bared, saliva dripping at the corners, more vicious then I'd ever seen him. And with reason. From our close range I'd caught the acrid smoke of Bear Man's clothes, noted the char marks on his pant legs, felt the weight of a predator's stare from eyes full of all kinds of hate. The man made Sing Sing inmates look like milkmaids.

My gaze shifted to Sam, who should be running for the hills by now. Instead, the guy was silently swinging his head side to side, his wide eyes imploring:
Don't stop, lady
.

"Sorry, still working on his training." I laughed, relying on that dumb blonde stereotype and a pretty smile to get my ass out of harm's way, but regretting the unintended reference to their argument. Hopefully, they'd seen my earbuds and assumed I couldn't hear a thing over my music.

I towed Max straight through a puddle, keeping my head down. Way down.

My peripheral view remained locked on the men as we trotted off. Sprinting would hook Bear Man's suspicion, draw him after us. So I kept perfect form, ran a casual pace, though not a calm one. Either he'd chase us down and beat us to death, or he'd assume I'd been too preoccupied with my dog to notice the glint of a metal pipe in his hand.

We neared the tree atop Great Hill and were about to cross the demarcation line into no-man's land when my brain hurtled needle-sharp warnings to stop. Flashes of flames, the pressure of hot air hitting like a giant slap, the stink of burning rubber. I hadn't stepped beyond this periphery in two years, and my nervous system decided to remind me why with a few mental postcards.

Damn it, this is no time for reminiscing.

My feet trudged, leaden and numb at once. Wires got crossed, intentions and actions mismatched, muscles stopped responding. Run, don't run. God, I wanted to puke.

My lungs began to seize, the pressure spreading from my chest to my throat. This impassable space, where Luke had gotten onto one knee, where time had stopped in a fantasy of happiness, grew thick as water and cold as ice. A glacial tide against my tumbling pebble.

Bear Man turned his head our direction, saw me slowing. Then he pivoted his whole body to face us.

My nerves ratcheted up a dozen more notches.

"Run!" shouted Sam as he leapt at Bear Man and grabbed the pipe.

Max rallied to return to the fight, but I dragged him beyond the circle at the top of Great Hill. Adrenaline pumped my feet down the other side of the hill, my lungs vacuuming air like machines despite my chest feeling wrenched tight. All morning I'd struggled to cross my 38th parallel between safety and terror. Now I couldn't exit my safety zone fast enough.

But like one of my nightmares, I couldn't run hard enough, far enough to avoid the coming explosion, so that I, too, would be engulfed in flames; lungs singed, flesh seared to bone, bone charred to ash. Ash to dust. Just like Luke.

I wiped my eyes, clearing my mind. Hesitating wasn't an option.

Max galloped ahead, leading the charge now that we were in full retreat. I fought to keep up with him. After several minutes of pure sprinting, however, my body couldn't keep pace, though my mind was racing a thousand directions at once. I fought the desire to quit, to give in to the shadows at my heels.

Reaching the plateau of an open field, I slowed and glanced over my shoulder. No thugs. At least none that I could see in the predawn light or beyond the fog. I stood well beyond my tree, well beyond the acme of fear. Fear of the men, fear of the past. Fear of myself.

A feeling other than panic filled me. I felt... exhilarated.

God, I must be mad.

My panting beat against the air in white gusts, my muscles trembling endlessly with adrenaline. Thunder roiled through my guts and I spat, emptying my mouth of the remaining tastes of fear. I hadn't passed out, hadn't retched, and my eyesight was sharper, focused. In fact, all my senses felt heightened. To the point of wanting to claw my own skin, if I didn't keep moving.

Max barked a string of warnings. I yanked out my earbuds, despite having stopped the music ages ago, and whipped around to find a line of men running onto the misty field, their dark clothing and low posture raising my hackles.

I darted north, Max running in stride.

"Hey, you. Blondie," called a wiry man ditching the line to take after us. "Stop."

Another glance over my shoulder to assess the threat: uniform, brimmed hat. Badge?

My feet slowed, my eyes refocused. Uniforms fanned the clearing, moving in synch as they searched the grass and brush. Cops, everywhere. My heart pounded harder.

I hate cops.

Max lunged against my grip as the officer approached, stepping close enough his nametag coming into view: M. Petosa.

"We're emptying the park, Ma'am. You'll need to come with me." Though a tall man who couldn't be more than 40, Officer Petosa stooped like a tired daisy. He wore a grim smile for a man supposed to make me feel safe, and he looked more irritated than afraid of my tyrant dog. "What the..." Petosa's leathery cheeks tightened as his pinprick eyes reviewed Max head to paw.

I followed his sightline down Max's skinny blond legs now freckled crimson. The sticky red fluid slid between my fingers, smelled coppery. Blood. Quickly, my fingers felt down Max's calves, pulled open his paw pads, checked every inch of each ankle, ruing which glass shard or rock I'd missed during my panicked, careless run.

"Ma'am," said Petosa in his crackled smoker's voice, reaching for my arm till Max snapped at him. And fortunately missed. "Ma'am!"

"Let me see where he's hurt first."

"That ain't from your dog, lady." Petosa motioned to my new sneakers, white ankle socks, fresh-shaved calves—all splattered the same crimson color.

I gulped air. If not Max's blood, or mine, then... That's when I remembered the puddle we'd splashed through in order to avoid Bear Man.

As I scrubbed my blood-stained fingers on the wet grass, I watched the cops beat the bushes with bully sticks and melt into the woods. Of course, this was a manhunt.

I stared at the blood coloring in the lines of my hands. My stomach tumbled all over again.

"I think you'd better show me where you've been," said Petosa.

My arm reflexively thrust in the direction of the thugs. Whatever I'd witnessed, whatever I'd avoided had been much bigger than just losing Max.

With a jarring whistle, Petosa drew his colleagues into the chase. Together, we jogged toward Great Hill, his men taking lead, me sketching details of the thugs, Petosa explaining the arson spree, Max bounding for joy as we returned to the fray.

"Sounds crazy," I said, as we came to a stop at the bottom of Great Hill, "but they both looked like longshoremen, not arsonists."

"All three dressed in the same clothes, but only one had a weapon." He cocked his brow, implying my eyewitness account was unreliable.

"Just two men. The bear—I mean the first man—had the weapon." I held my hands a foot apart. "A pipe about this size. The second guy jumped him for it."

"Sounds like a suppressed firearm," he said to himself as he turned away, and I knew he meant a silencer.

Max panted at my side, and I bent to huddle with him. Recalling how Sam had grabbed the weapon drove a burning deep into my spine where a bullet could have pierced. He'd saved my life. Or tried to end it. I'd never know which for sure.

Maybe the blood was his, considering his posture, not to mention his losing streak. But there'd been so much blood, enough to create a puddle. Even a healthy man would be passed out or dead from that much blood loss.

Setting his mouth to his shoulder radio, Petosa called off a series of numbered codes, but all I registered was "description matching suspects, believed armed, officers in pursuit heading up the east side of Great Hill," and I felt redeemed. "Wait here," Petosa ordered as I moved to follow his lead. "I don't need a chaperone, lady, and you're safer staying as far away from these scumbags as possible."

Ignoring my retort, he jogged up the hill, one hand holding a bully stick from slapping his long lean leg, the other drawing his weapon. Standard police Glock, I noted, not sure I preferred being left behind, unarmed.

Max barked after Petosa, like he wanted to tag along, so I hugged him tighter. We were alive, despite my nervous system short circuiting. But a life of dodging bullets told me my luck would run out. Eventually. Luke had called me a danger junky, which wasn't the same as calling me brave. A job requirement, I'd explained to deaf ears, and so went our endless arguments till I resigned my assignment and unpacked my bags permanently.

Sirens wailed in the distance, a piercing, chilling sound that railed against my nerves. I'd banish that sound from the earth, if I could.

Max's bark spun me on my heel. He whined before I, too, sensed thunder underfoot. Across the lawn a mounted officer galloped his bay steed, hooves spraying up grass, head pumping the air. A spectacle of muscle and sinew and pure strength racing into battle that took my breath away.

Crossing the field in a sprint behind the horse came yet another man. But the guy resembled neither cop nor thug. He looked more like my stockbroker. Under a camel overcoat he wore a gray suit and a red tie. Salt-and-pepper hair made him appear mature at a distance, while his buttery-tan dress shoes looked like he'd slip headlong in the wet grass like a kid.

He turned toward me and Max, as the horse and rider continued toward the hill, gaining the incline with short, weighted strides before racing out of view.

The man's head-on approach tempted me to release Max's collar. After a morning of repeat heart attacks, I had little tolerance for anyone charging us.

"That a tracking dog?" he yelled from a couple of car-lengths away.

"No, but he'll bite if you keep running at me."

The man slowed, setting wide palms in the air. A tiny notepad fell open in his right hand.

A reporter, just my luck.

As he lowered his arms, a badge over his breast pocket caught the light and winked at me. "You can't be here, Miss. You could be contaminating my crime scene."

So, not a reporter. A cop. Even luckier.

I waved a hand toward my blood-freckled legs. "I believe I'm wearing your crime scene."

He closed the distance to inspect my running shoes, my legs, my hips. My dog. His face soured. "And so you are."

He stood nearly as tall as the first thug, maybe six-four, but exhibited finer posture and definitely a cleaner shave. Polished. Long horizontal cheekbones underscored dark circles, which in turn highlighted crisp blue eyes that flashed upon my review of him. He was a striking man, in looks and authority, and he damn well knew it.

"I'm Detective McCarthy," he said, starting to offer a hand but withdrawing when Max balked. "We're securing the park, so I'll need you, and your dog, to exit with one of my officers."

"You can blame your officer for dragging me back here in the first place." I crossed my arms, incredulous that he wouldn't want to take a statement from me when I was clearly dripping with material witness evidence. "Why would I want to get closer to the danger?"

"I don't know, Miss. You tell me." The corners of his mouth curved, charming me out of my smart-ass comeback.

Then a voice mumbled McCarthy's name and he snatched a radio unit from his hip, spreading his stance wider and opening the jacket of his Armani suit as he bellowed orders at invisible underlings.

"And find those dogs," he said, glancing at Max. "K9 Unit's dragging their asses again."