Deep Breath (3 page)

“I also need a hamburger,” he said, checking his mirrors and his blind spot before passing the slow-moving vehicle in front of them. He let out a long low whistle. “Now that’s what I call a car.”

Georgia looked down from her window at the boat-sized convertible, noticing little about the car because her attention was all for the driver sitting back and soaking up the sun. His hair was dark and cut short in a near military buzz. He had just enough of a shadow on his face to bring to mind a bad boy or two that she’d known.

She liked the way this one sprawled all over the big bench seat like he owned the world and the car was his throne. His legs were long, his arms, too. His hands big with long fingers, and beautifully shaped. She couldn’t tell a thing about his eyes behind his shades, but his mouth was wide, his lips caught in the hint of a smile.

And then he was gone, Finn returning to the right lane, rendering the car behind them nothing more than a blue-green speck in the mirror on her side.

She dropped her head back and closed her eyes. “Now that’s what I call a reason for taking a ride.”

The black luxury car was silent as it hugged the long straight road. Move fast, keep low, stay quiet. His favorite way to travel. He hated public transportation. Too busy. Too much pushing, shoving. Too many people.

Charlie Castro didn’t like people. Not those he worked for. Not those he worked with. Human beings. Lying, scheming users. Always with the excuses. The better good. The needs of the many. The end justifying the means.

Bullshit.

Charlie prided himself on being straight up. Behind the excuses lay the truth. Power, sex, money. The triumvirate ran the world, and history was the proof.

He did what he did for the almighty buck. And he did it because lying, scheming, and using were what he did well.

Power was overrated. It came with too much attention. Sex had never been a priority. His abbreviated time in utero had shorted out that gene.

But money. Money provided every pleasure wanted, every pain desired. Charlie didn’t buy much. Good clothes. A choice car. First edition hardcovers. Fine wine.

Offering the services he did let him see what other men hunted, how much they would spend to obtain it. How much they would spend to keep it from another’s hands.

He’d dealt in antiquities for the last eight years. A no-man’s-land of finders keepers. Robin Hood with a twist. Taking from the rich, giving to the richer. Underground. Off the record. The items he located would never see the light of day. Ownership equaled power. Money was no object.

He sat straighter in the Mercedes’ reclining leather seat as, ahead on the right, a diner came into view. He didn’t care about food. He noticed the nondescript metal building for one reason.

The pickup Georgia McLain had climbed into in Waco sat parked beside a second car in front.

He motioned for his driver to pull in and circle to the rear. Two more trucks. Empty fields behind. Charlie weighed his odds. A spring break weekend. A sparsely traveled road. A little-visited eating establishment.

Two trucks likely equaled two employees. Georgia was traveling with a man. The second car was an unknown factor. He, his two men, and their arsenal were not.

The property his current client wanted was hot. The client himself at risk for exposure. Charlie made his choice. He would get what he wanted.

Georgia would do all the work.

11:45
A.M.

Tracy Dunn double-checked that she’d locked the bathroom door before leaning over the sink to splash her face with cold water. It was too early in the day for her to be sweating; between the heat from the grill and that from the sun, not to mention carting hot coffee and steaming plates from one end of the diner to the other, she ended her days smelling—and looking—like she’d been rode hard and put up wet.

But here it was not quite even noon, and she was already sticky and hot. If she wasn’t twenty-nine, she would swear she was going through menopause.

She grabbed a handful of paper towels and blotted the water from her cheeks and her neck, staring at her reflection and thinking for the millionth time that she hated the tan uniform even more than she hated the pink.

Not that the white was any better. What with her skin so splotchy and her hair falling out in clumps and being unable to eat without wanting to throw up and crying herself to sleep every night, she pretty much looked like leftover crap all the time lately.

Who knew stress could turn a body into such a pathetic, sloppy, ugly mess?

She kept waiting for Phil to hand her a pink slip with her paycheck, except being here as long as she had, she knew how much trouble he had getting dependable help to stick around for what he was able to pay.

She finished drying her face and neck, then blew her nose, tossed the towels into the trash, and opened the mirrored cabinet above the sink. Since she and Patty—Phil’s two female employees—were the only ones to use the ladies’ facilities regularly, they both kept a few personal items—deodorant and hairspray and tampons and the like—stored here.

She pulled the scrunchie from her ponytail and grabbed the hairbrush from her shelf, closing the cabinet door so she could use the mirror. Pulling the brush through her hair, she wished she’d said no when Patty called last night to switch today’s shift with tomorrow’s.

Tomorrow wouldn’t really be any better, but today really sucked. And then seeing the flash of her gold wedding band reflected as she pulled back her hair made everything suck a million times worse.

She was going to cry. She just knew it. Damn stupid Freddy Dunn. This was all her stupid-excuse-for-a-husband’s fault, though she kept waiting for the paperwork to show up that would make him her stupid-excuse-for-an-ex-husband. Half the time she wanted him back. Half, she never wanted to see him again. She couldn’t remember ever being so confused.

They’d both been their parents’ only children, and he’d been a part of her life forever, running with her through summer sprinklers when they’d been four, teaching her at six to climb over the Cyclone fence from the postage stamp of her front yard to his. He’d kissed her for the first time at ten, added the French twist of his tongue at fourteen.

At sixteen, she’d given him her virginity. At seventeen, she, a Dunbar, had graduated two minutes before him, a Dunn. At eighteen, they’d decided one last name would suit the both of them. For the last eleven years, she’d been Tracy Dunn, Mrs. Freddy Dunn, and living in his family’s house since.

After deeding them the property, his parents had moved to Louisiana, his mother wanting to be close to his grandmother, who was ill. The following year, Tracy’s own mother had passed, leaving her father living next door alone. Ten years she’d been all that her father had. And now Freddy wanted to sell both places, send her father to a home, and move…

At the sound of the kitchen bell signaling a customer, she shoved her hairbrush back into the cabinet, blew her nose, and quickly wiped her eyes. Phil would be banging on the door if she didn’t hustle her backside out to see to the order.

So she pasted on the best smile that she could and reached over to flush her thoughts of Freddy, along with the tissue, down the commode.

She waved cheerily at Phil and his arched eyebrow as she wound her way from the bathroom through the kitchen and down the alley, where she grabbed two laminated menu sheets and two glasses of ice water before heading toward the couple who’d just settled into the far corner booth.

“Morning, folks. I’m Tracy,” she said, having glanced at the clock over the door on her way by. Eleven-forty-five. “Are you here for breakfast, lunch, or supper? Eggs are good all day long, and if you want tonight’s pork chop special now, I’ll sweet-talk Phil into whipping it up for you.”

The man, really cute, hair falling over his collar and forehead and into his bright blue eyes, didn’t even bother with the menu. “Hi, Tracy,” he said, and grinned. “I’ll have a bacon cheeseburger basket, extra fries, and the biggest Coke you can bring me.”

She didn’t need to jot down the order to remember it. She just smiled right back and took the unused menu from his hand. “Sounds like someone skipped breakfast this morning.”

He chuckled. “Someone got called away from last night’s dinner and is short on both food and sleep.”

The woman with him snorted and rolled her eyes. “I’ll have the same.”

“Good deal,” Tracy said, tapping the two menus against the edge of the table, and wondering how this couple fit. “I’ll bring y’all’s Cokes right now. You go on and take a nap until I get back.”

The man slouched down in the booth, the vinyl squeaking beneath him, and laughed as she walked away. She found herself sucking in her stomach and using the menus to fan her face.
Whoo-boy.
Men weren’t supposed to be that beautiful.

If she wasn’t married…

Yikes. Talk about cold water slapping a girl in the face. Tracy moved back into the alley, shoved the menus into the plastic tub beneath the counter, wrote up the ticket, clipped it on the carousel hanging from the order window, and spun it around for Phil. Then she scooped ice into two giant soda glasses and set the first beneath the fountain to fill.

The syrup and the carbonated water blurred into one big fizzy stream. She blinked away this newest batch of tears, used her wrist to push back her bangs, and focused on what she was doing. If she screwed up something as simple as two large Cokes, she deserved to get fired.

She couldn’t afford to get fired. Not with Freddy gone, and now having to make up the difference all on her own between what Medicare paid on her father’s bills and what the nursing service charged for his in-home care. She needed a new job, a better paying job, but waiting tables was the only thing she knew, the only thing she’d done for eleven years.

What she was going to have to do was get a second job. Maybe get on an evening shift at the Wal-Mart Super Center in Waco, and have one of her father’s old friends come sit with him while she was gone. She could get a DVD player and a bunch of old Jimmy Stewart and Robert Mitchum movies.

That might work, she thought, grabbing up the two Cokes and carrying them to the couple in the booth, smiling widely and feeling a little less down in the dumps. She didn’t need Freddy. She could figure this out on her own.

“Here y’all go.” She placed two Coca-Cola coasters on the speckled Formica, set the drinks on top, nodded toward the glass dispenser at the end of the table as she tucked her serving tray under one arm. “Straws are in the jar there. Burgers’ll be up in a few, if y’all can hang on that long?”

“We’re doing great, Tracy, thanks,” the man said, his smile so bright she wanted to give him a hug. The woman didn’t say anything, just reached over for a straw. She wasn’t exactly scowling, and Tracy wouldn’t call her rude, but neither would she call her happy.

She would’ve tried to make small talk if she’d thought it would be welcomed. But the couple was too hard to read, and she was fresh out of any extra friendly today. And then a second later, the door opened again, bringing a new customer, more work, another distraction to keep her moping at bay.

This was good. A busy Friday. She turned, hearing the woman behind her mutter, “Holy crap.” She didn’t look back to see what the brunette was talking about because she knew. The man climbing onto a stool at the counter looked like he’d stepped out of a Hollywood limo.

He was wearing simple clothes. Deck shoes and blue jeans and a yellow T-shirt with the long sleeves pushed up to his elbows and the buttons at the neck undone. And even if she was still married, she wasn’t dead or blind.

His dark hair was cut short and he needed to shave. And when he took off his sunglasses and tossed them to the counter, “holy crap” were pretty much the only words that came to mind.

“Hey, there,” she said, stepping into the alley, reaching for a menu, and scooping ice into a glass for water. “Gorgeous day out, isn’t it?”

He took the glass and drank down half. “Just about perfect,” he said as she refilled him. “Thanks.”

“Can I get you an iced tea or a soda? Coffee?” Grinning like some movie star groupie, she hooked her thumb back toward the coffeemaker. “Pot’s fresh.”

“How ’bout orange juice?” He nodded toward the menu she still held. “I was thinking of a couple of eggs, over easy, toast, and bacon?”

“You got it.” She dropped the menu back into the bucket with the rest of the laminated sheets and turned to jot down the order for Phil. Reaching up, she clipped the ticket to the carousel, gave it a spin, and froze.

Time froze, too, the aluminum wheel spinning and spinning, the green and white ticket flapping like a flag in the breeze. Phil stood with his hands raised shoulder level, facing a man who wore sunglasses and a light summer suit, was clean-cut with dark hair, and held a pistol-grip shotgun like the one Freddy showed her at the pawn shop when he bought his thirty-thirty for hunting season last year.

Tracy squeaked. The man turned, the barrel of his gun swinging toward her. She screamed. The customer at the counter scrambled up and over, sending salt and pepper shakers and ketchup bottles flying, and tackled her to the ground.

He lay half beneath her, his arm around her middle, his heart beating as hard as hers, her chest heaving harder. Water from his glass dribbled off the edge of the counter onto the floor, the sound making her need to pee even worse than her fear. She swore her chest was about to explode.

What the hell was happening?

The front door opened. She heard footsteps, followed by a loud, booming, “Sit. Don’t move.”

She wanted to get up, to see what was going on. The man holding her wouldn’t let her go. He whispered a soft, “Shh,” waiting, his body tense, alert, still, then leaned forward to grab a steak knife from the utensil bucket beneath the counter and slipped it into his sleeve.

The diner’s interior dimmed as the window blinds were closed. The front locks
thunked
into place, that noise followed by the screech of the door sign sliding from Open to Closed. “Everyone quiet. You don’t talk, you don’t get hurt.”

Eyes squeezed shut, Tracy prayed, wanting to see her father, wanting even more to see Freddy and tell him so many things. She got to “Our Father who art in Heaven” before she and her rescuer were hauled to their feet.

Her eyes flew open. The man who’d been holding the gun on Phil now held it on all three of them. At least until he figured she wasn’t much of a threat, and ordered Phil and the customer to cross the room and join the couple guarded by a second man with a darker suit and lighter hair.

The third man who’d come in stood silently at the door, doing nothing but watching everything going on. The first man, the one nearest Tracy, reached beneath the counter for the tub of menus and shoved it into her hands. “Get over there. I want cell phones, car keys, wallets, pocket knives, nail clippers. Everything they’ve got on them. You, too. Pockets, purse. All of it in here.”

She nodded, then stood there shaking, trying to make her feet move, afraid she was going to barf all over the menus Phil had paid a pretty penny to have laminated.

Behind her, the man slammed shut the warped back door and locked it. The order window’s rolling cover came down next with a metallic bang. And when the side door leading to the hallway between the bathrooms and the kitchen thudded closed, she jumped.

“Hurry it up,” he said, nudging her forward. She caught a sharp breath and shuddered, feeling like a traitor, unable to meet any of the other hostages’ eyes. Because that’s what they all were, wasn’t it? Hostages? Like on
Law & Order
or
CSI
or something?

Her shoes felt like lead weights as she crossed the room, holding the tub while the second man, the one in the darker suit, first searched Phil, robbing him of his keys and wallet and the dog whistle his grandson, Sam, had made in Scouts. She watched all of his things land on top of the menus and wanted to cry.

Phil squeezed into one of the booths as the crook patted down the man from the counter. She lifted her lashes and met his gaze, drawing a bit of strength from the way his brows came together over his dark green eyes and the way he gave a shake of his head as if telling her not to worry.

His key ring and cell phone and wallet ended up in the tub with Phil’s stuff. When the steak knife was discovered, the man searching him shoved him into the table, cursing rudely, and she bit at the lip that threatened to tremble.

The woman came next. She had nothing in her jeans pockets but a business card holder with her driver’s license and her cash money. She grumbled under her breath while being searched, glaring at the man who still stood near the door.

He had to be the boss, what with the way he lifted a finger and signaled for his men to move onto the last man, the customer who’d been sitting with the woman and ordered the cheeseburger basket and Coke.

He tried to chat up the thug searching his pockets, asking how the guy’s day was going, wondering if a bag of chips wouldn’t be too much trouble since he was starving.

She wanted to laugh—she wanted to get him the chips— and ended up fighting both tears and a smile. How could he make her laugh when she was so scared her stomach felt like she’d swallowed half of the rocks from her flower garden?

Once his pockets were empty and his belongings piled in with the rest, he was ordered into the booth with Phil and the other customer, and she was ordered to carry the tub to the table at the diner’s far end, then to sit on a stool at the counter out of the way.