An Eye for Danger (8 page)

Damn right he should be scared. My nerves were as likely to burst as a roadside bomb.

That's when I caught the mirror's reflection and didn't recognize the woman staring back at me. My flaxen ponytail sagged at my shoulders like a frizzy horsetail; my mud-brown eyes were plunged in fire-hydrant red; my once-pink lips looked ashen, cracked; and my shoulders slumped to an all-new low. I was never a prom queen, and my freckles got their share of teasing in grade school, but I'd never felt ugly, not even knee-deep in Sudanese mud. Until now.

"Bet you're a looker when you get made up." The toilet seat looked like a child's chair under Sam's build, with his legs stretched and his boots digging into the cabinet opposite him for leverage. "Lotta dresses in your closet. All in dry-cleaner bags. Call girl, maybe."

"What?"

"Just guessing." He grinned as Max darted between us before I could land my fist on the guy's cheek. "Careful, buddy. Mamma's getting testy."

"Go to your bed." I pointed Max out of the bathroom, and he slouched toward his bed, his nails tap-dancing on the tiles.

"Bet you say that to all your men."

"I'm not a hooker, damn it." I jerked open the cabinet door and it rebounded and slammed back on me. "Goddamn—"

From an emergency kit I pulled a sterile bandage roll for his ribs, ripped off the plastic wrap, unraveled the cloth, and snapped it taut between my fists.

"Hey, take it easy. I'm unarmed," said Sam.

True. He'd left the gun on the kitchen table, so I was free to punch at will. That is, if he wasn't walking his long fingers down his side, wincing as he counted broken ribs.
One, two, three
.

"Look, I'm strumming." He snickered.

Staring down at this smiling, delirious, grizzled man, I asked: Why me?

The phone rang, startling us both. Sam grabbed my wrist, suddenly sober, and shook his head.

"I always let the machine get it." I pulled, but Sam wouldn't relent. I rolled my eyes, letting him have my wrist completely and propping my other hand on my hip while the phone rang its head off. That's when I noticed the red, bubbling skin on the underside of Sam's forearm. "That looks like a burn."

Sam dropped my arm fast, swatting away my prying fingers, as a young man's voice crooned into the apartment. "Hey, Jules. It's me, Howard."

"Shit." I closed my eyes.

"Yup, that time again," Howard continued over the recorder, his bubbly voice grating against my nerves. "Be ready this Thursday, because we're off to… wait for it… Idahooooo. Plains, rivers, mountains, small cities, boring people. Thrill of a lifetime, I know. But supposedly there's some annual food festival worth seeing according to you-know-whore. Let's just say don't dress up. Heaven knows I wouldn't pick the boonies for talent like yours, and the old she-devil wouldn't either if she'd just get laid once in a year. But, alas, we've been sentenced. Anyway, meet you at your favorite bewitching hour at your local coffee shop. I don't know how you can stand the early shift." He gave an exaggerated yawn. "I could sleep all day. Then again, I need my beauty rest for my big date."

The final beep sounded, cutting Howard off, and I let out my breath. That time again. Time to step outside my safety zone and dread the world. Once a month, my evil editor gave me a shithole assignment and Howard called with travel plans that gave me an anxiety attack.

I love my job, I love my job.

"Interesting boyfriend." Sam watched me fist-choke the life out the bandage roll. "He left a couple calls on your machine already."

"He's not my... He's just a kid. My assistant. And I don't appreciate you listening to my calls."

Sam hovered his hand over my fist. "You gotta relax, Jules. You're making me tense."

"The problem is," I said, my arms dropping to my sides, "I have to go where they send me. If I don't—"

"You lose your job. Hey, I get it. Just need a few days to heal. Then I'm gone."

My jaw slackened.
Days?
As in he wasn't leaving tonight? My mind hadn't anticipated past dinner. I wasn't exactly counting on an overnight houseguest, especially a fugitive, but even I could see he'd never survive the streets in this shape. Worse, if police found him, he seemed arrogant enough to shoot his way out of an arrest. I couldn't have that on my conscience.

Sam wasn't watching so much as studying me now. Just like I'd studied him—his eye dilation over the ringing phone, his nervous laugh when I said I wasn't a call girl, his teary sigh when he first breathed without the vest. The deep smile lines at his eyes when Max came to his side. Here I was, trying to understand the human behind the fugitive, the why of his awful choices, the why of him, yet I couldn't sit still under the same microscope.

"Why don't you tell me about this job you hate," he said.

"I don't hate my job." I crossed my arms. "You going to tell me how you got that burn?"

"Nope." He smiled, tilted his head. "Maybe you just hate your boss."

"And maybe you ought to tell me why your buddy was burying a body in the park."

"Fair enough." He quit talking, started unzipping. An invitation for me to leave.

I turned to the door, then paused. "You called McCarthy 'detective.' But you couldn't have known who he was. He never announced himself."

"Move on, Jules."

"I saw the body. One of you killed that man."

"Nope."

"Tony, right?"

"Nope."

"Shot him. With a silencer."

"Nope." Sam raised a brow, daring another question, or laughing that I expected answers.

I leaned into his face. "You're hurt, you need medical attention, and the entire police force is hunting you down. So you'd better come up with a better story than 'nope' if you want me to help you."

"Nope. No hospital. This," he said, and nodded to his stomach. "Sure, we can talk about this. You saw what happened. Meathead punches my lights out, I go down. Then he kicks my sides in, leaves me for dead. I catch up, we argue, throw a few punches, yadda yadda. Then crazy dog barks, cute girl comes running. We wrestle for the gun. He shoots me instead of her. End of story." He chuckled between stunted breaths. "Guess he'd rather I be dead than pissed at him."

I leaned back on the sink basin, synthesizing what I'd seen with what I'd suspected: that Sam had risked his life for me, a complete stranger.

"Gunshot blew my lungs out," he added, licking his bloody lip. "Must've passed out. Came to, bugs crawling up my nose. So I dragged myself behind a tree to hide. Then crazy dog attacks. Cute girl shows up again. Prick yells at her. She buys my way past cops. We run. Run some more. Hide to avoid Meathead. You know the rest. Typical boy meets girl, boy kidnaps girl, girl stabs boy with scissors story." He winked. "Reporter like you oughta enjoy a piece like that."

"I'm not a reporter."

He squinted. "Journalism degree's the only thing on your walls. Berkeley, right? Cal girl not call girl." He laughed, gingerly, rubbing his side. "Like I said, I took a look around."

"I'm a photographer. A photojournalist." I sighed.

He swatted my leg. "Could've said so in the first place."

"You could've asked me straight, without all the damned guessing games."

His smirk faded. "Occupational hazard. Mentor taught me 'always test your subject.' Ninety-nine percent of folks lie to me, so I get used to gaming them." Sam nodded to his feet. "Can't reach. You mind?" He waited, smiling.

With a huff, I untied his boots and pulled off his socks, holding my breath. My mother raised a sucker. When I turned to wash my hands, he gave the heave-ho off the seat. And dove head-first toward the cabinet.

I leapt between him and his target, unable to grab hold of anything but his bare, bruised skin. "Crazy fool, you're going to kill yourself and leave that on me."

"Ain't dead yet."

Panting, he aimed for the bathtub, but I resisted his moves. He leaned harder, heavier. I wasn't going to win this one. So with my arm around his waist, I managed him over the tub's ledge and onto slippery porcelain till he leaned against the tile wall.

When he nodded he was okay, I turned, but he rammed his arm across my path.

"Stay." He pushed his trousers off his hips, and my fingers curled, ready to claw into his burn. "Doing this for you, you know."

My imagination ran wild. With alcohol softening his pain, he could try to overpower me. The walls would insulate my screams, the tight quarters limit my evasive moves. From experience I knew even kind people can kill, but with his eyelids drooping, and his gun in the kitchen, he looked a lot less dangerous. Though my wrist remembered his grip well enough.

"Turn your head," he said. "Hey, I'm kinda shy."

I let out my breath and lifted my gaze, relieved and annoyed simultaneously.

"Give me your leg," he said, huffing harder. When I asked why, he snapped, "Christ, just do it. Put your foot on the ledge. Hurry." He shifted closer, practically chest to chest, his hot breath hitting my cheek as his fingers jabbed into my thigh. "This stable?" He reached for the curtain rod. I shook my head and his hand slapped back onto my thigh. "Then you're it."

More panting, less moving now. Despite using me as a safety bar, he seemed stuck or on the verge of passing out. "You gotta help me, Jules. Can't stand here all day."

I grabbed the waistband of his workpants and shifted them down his thighs. The day could not get any weirder. Then his boxer briefs plunged. My eyes snapped closed as I tugged his underwear back up, as scared to see him undressed as he was purportedly shy about it.

"Good catch." Sam started shifting one foot to the other, pushing off the cardboard-stiff pants, while his thumb dug deeper into my thigh. "Why they make carpenter pants so damn rigid," he mumbled.

"Sam." My foot clutched the tub's ledge to keep my leg from slipping. He finally stepped out of the pants, but by then my leg was shaking under his weight. "Sam!"

"Got it." He released my leg and slapped his hand on the wall over my shoulder, caging me. But with the meat and sinew of his muscles struggling to hold him still, he wasn't proving much of a threat.

He closed his eyes, gathered as much air into his lungs as he could manage, which wasn't much, and wavered, while I speculated how long he'd last till collapsing. Or whether he was expecting me to finish undressing him.

"Let me find help. I won't call the police, I promise." I met his eyes as he lifted his head. A weak smile penetrated his pallor.

"You still don't get it." Laughing, he raised himself to an unsteady height and puffed out his chest. "I am the police."

CHAPTER 6

"So what now, Officer..." I prompted as I rummaged through an old makeup bag in the medicine cabinet and Sam showered.

Judging from his mashing noises and the smell of my expensive rosemary soap, Sam was lathering himself. Suddenly, the bathroom felt too intimate. Leaving the bathroom door ajar made me feel only slightly less inappropriate about being so close to a naked stranger (as if the day hadn't already been an exercise in annihilating boundaries), but better about having a clear path of egress should events get weirder.

"Eat, sleep, be merry."

No way I was asking what Sam meant by that. "I mean I assume you have a plan." I stuck my hand through the shower curtain to proffer the four dusty ibuprofens I'd found. "You might at least call your precinct to come get you."

"She's sick of me already, Max." Sam cupped my hand and sucked the pills from my palm. I snapped my arm back.

"You weren't exactly invited." I quickly washed my hands, as he loudly balked at the sudden loss of hot water.

Maybe he really was a cop. That would explain the vest, his saving my life, his knowledge of the detective, his incessant questions. God, the questions. Though it didn't justify Sam taking me at gunpoint, especially in Stone's presence.

Then again, anyone could get a Kevlar vest on the Internet, be annoyingly nosy, or pretend to care about my safety. And even thugs could know the cops on their trails. If he was some dockhand-turned-arsonist prepping me for a big take, the most he'd find was a couple grand in the safe and cheap diamond studs in the back bedroom. Howard kept my high-end cameras and lenses at the office, my trust fund was tightly managed out of a Boston law firm, and the rest I'd hidden because I'd learned before that things can be taken from you. Like your freedom, your life, people you love.

No, he had to be a cop. That explained my niggling subconscious. And Max knew. He'd sidled up to Sam from the get, playing tug of war instead of attacking, licking when he should be biting. I glared through the bathroom door at my handsome mutt, who was sulking on his plush designer bed, waiting out his exile to play with the stranger in our home.

You're basing your security on your dog, Jules?

"I'm curious," said Sam. "About what you thought of me before."

Asshole?

"People assume things, draw conclusions that turn out dangerous."

"Move on, Officer." I'd stayed in the room to ensure he didn't brain himself on the floor, but I didn't have to suffer the indignity of more mind games.

"Detective, actually." His voice sounded deflated. "Detective Wainwright."

Shit, a detective. In my home.

The only thing worse would be a Fed. I'd been interrogated before, with their prodding and pressure till I nearly broke. Nearly.

The phone rang, and Sam peeked through the curtain, soapy-headed and squinting.

"Relax, Detective. The machine, remember?"

A few rings more, then a deep voice rose over the shower's hiss. "This is Detective McCarthy. I'd like to go over a few details with you, Julie. In person. I still owe you that cup of coffee, so maybe we could meet somewhere close to your apartment. You have my card, so at your convenience. But today would be best." Then the beep.

Sam narrowed his eyes on me. I realized he couldn't hear the machine over the shower and that I was sitting a bit high.

"One of yours," I said, slumping. "Your friend, McCarthy."

Grumbling, Sam dropped the curtain. When the water shut off, I pulled an oversized bath towel from the closet. My arm wavered inside the moist shower, waiting for him to take the peace offering.