Smokescreen (6 page)

“Make time,” he told her. “Or I’ve got some photos to share with the police.”

He hadn’t expected it to stop her so short. And then she seemed to realize she’d given too much away and she turned away from him—but stopped short at that, too, and finally turned to face him. “You’re full of crap. The police don’t care about me.”

He shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe I should just show those photos around the street and see what people have to say.”

She informed him what they’d have to say in one succinct, anatomically impossible suggestion.

Unperturbed, he crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the phone beside him, and said, “You all have the same eyes.”

You all have the same eyes.

Dammit all anyway. She didn’t need this. Not with the Captain out of touch and no one else to contact and the fair certainty that Scalpucci would move on the other houses in the local underground, hunting his wife. He’d not only likely find her, but he’d go through everyone in his way to get her. Other women on the run, other house guardians…

And what did it matter, anyway? So Jethro had photos. It didn’t matter who he showed them to. He was the one who would seem crazy, claiming that the woman in the photos—her true appearance, so carefully hidden until now—had actually been different in person.

Except she’d taken too long to respond to him…given herself away. He might not know just what those photos meant to her, but he knew they meant
something.

Didn’t mean she couldn’t still fake it. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re still full of crap.” She pushed past him, headed for the exit and her sloppily parked car.

Damned if he didn’t follow—making no bones about it, right on her heels. The kind of persistence she’d want on
her
side if she needed help. From a man who—despite the way he’d nearly been blown up, despite the way Sam the hooker had dragged him around and Sam—almost—I Am had bossed him and resisted him, despite the way he’d so far been thwarted at every turn—didn’t show any of the classic signs of frightening temper or inter-gender control issues. Persistent, yes. He wanted what he wanted, all right. But even in these strange circumstances, he’d been willing to work with her to get it.

And he’d kept enough of his wits about him to catch a glimpse of her most closely guarded secret.

But just a glimpse. He couldn’t truly understand. He was fishing.

He had to be.

She unlocked the car door with one stab at the remote button—driver’s side only. And when she looked up she found Jethro on the other side of the car, his hand at the door. Waiting. Looking at her with an interesting combination of trust and demand. He’d cleaned up somewhat while she’d been questioning Madonna under the guise of a young nurse’s aide. His mustache looked soft and groomed; his hair no longer entirely disheveled, but obviously finger-combed. No dried blood in sight,
just a few fresh-looking cuts and a bruised bump on the side of his nose.

Waiting.

She unlocked the door. Dammit.

The car shifted under his weight as he joined her. “Thanks.”

“I just don’t have time to argue with you,” she muttered, starting the car.

“No, you could have simply driven off and left me there. I know you wanted to.” He tipped his head at her. “Although you
do
still have my gloves.”

“And I like them,” she said, putting the car into reverse and threading her way out of the parking aisle. “It’s a good look. Very chick warrior. Just what I need right now.”

“Do you?” He turned in the seat, putting his back to the door and straining the seat belt, so he could regard her more fully. “Now that I’m in the car and headed into chick warrior turf with you, is there anything more you’d like to tell me about your little talk with Madonna? Aside from how you got in there—in case you think I didn’t notice the way you glossed over that part the first time.”

She made a face without thinking, and quickly smoothed it away. “I don’t care if you noticed. You don’t need to know.”

He blew air through his mustache. “Strictly speaking, that’s true enough.” But he didn’t let her off the hook, not with his gaze riveted to her face as it was. He showed no concern for the fast corner she took. “But I
want
to know.”

And again, she ignored it. Glossed it over with other answers he wanted—answers she might as well give
him. At this point, the refuge houses were blown. “Madonna spent time in three houses before she hit the streets again. The first, you know about.” She slowed to take a red light, and glanced over at him. “This strikes me as a good time to mention again that too much time has passed for your sister to have been at the entry house, and that you’re far, far better off now than if you’d spoken to the Captain about finding her.”

Jethro snorted, unconvinced about that latter.

“Not kidding,” Sam told him, and hit the accelerator for the green, abruptly enough to rock his head back.

“Moot point, don’t you think?”

“Only if you don’t try to find Lizbet again.”

Silence. Then he cleared his throat. “Am I that transparent?”

“More than. Besides, if you do happen to find her again, it’ll be long after your sister is out of this city. Once that happens, even the Captain doesn’t know where they go.”

Another silence, while Sam took a short exit ramp to the city’s inner loop, four constantly shifting lanes of left-and right-hand exits that took great familiarity to navigate with any efficiency even with the paucity of cars on the road at this time of night. Then Jethro said, “That’s twice now. My sister. You believe me now?”

“I’m staking my work with the underground on it.” The Captain would shun her if Jethro turned out to be Lizbet’s ex.

The Captain might well shun her anyway. She should have left him in that hospital parking lot to call himself a cab and spend the rest of his life wondering where Lizbet had gone.

“Why do you do it?” he asked abruptly. “Help them?”

She looked at him in surprise. Why? Maybe because these women were doing what she’d never really been able to do—risk everything to find themselves. True, they had incentive she’d never encountered. She’d always been a little too comfortable with her life, even when she felt she never truly knew herself or what she wanted. She’d never quite found the wherewithal to leave behind what she knew in an effort to find out what she
didn’t.

As if she was going to say those words to this man. So she said simply, “Because I can,” which was also true—and also what she often told herself.

“Why’s that?”

She glanced at him, a truly bemused look. “You never give up, do you? Are you sure you’re not a reporter?”

He grinned, an engaging combination with that mustache. “Just a humble silk-screening man,” he said. “A curious one. Why can you? What is it you can bring to them that no one else does?”

“What would you do if the answer was ‘nothing’?”

He gave it a moment’s thought. “I wouldn’t believe it.”

“Why not?” She turned the tables on him just to be doing it.

“Because of the way your voice sounded when you said that.
Because I can.
That meant something.”

S
am almost stopped the car to look at him, surprised at the depth of his perception. Instead she found the exit she wanted and shot onto a street full of blinking construction sawhorses and signs, taking the curves of the rerouted street at a speed much faster than the posted limit. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll give you that. I work with a private investigator. I have the training to keep an eye on that house and to know who and what might be trouble. I can’t
believe
I missed that van.” And she could hardly tell him why. She could hardly say she’d been distracted by him, that she’d been the one dogging his footsteps these past two nights. She didn’t give him the time to ask. More turning the tables. “Now you tell
me.
We hardly ever get family members hunting up our refugees. Husbands and boyfriends, yes. Brothers, no. Why are you so determined to find your sister?”

He hesitated, and she sensed it wasn’t out of reluctance, but in an effort to find the right words. Then he shrugged and said, “Because I
should.
”

She looked at him, a quick glance as a streetlight flashed overhead. He meant it. And she might push for details, but for now she had what was important. The worry in his voice. The sense of connection behind
those words. Maybe she’d done the right thing after all, opening that car door for him.

Or maybe not. But she’d done it, and now they headed straight for one of the very secrets she wasn’t supposed to know, and certainly wasn’t ever supposed to tell. She glanced at him again, found him watching her…suppressed that frisson of awareness that he could somehow see through her. Literally, right through her guises.

He couldn’t. No one ever had. But there was his camera, snugged against the seat and the center console of the car, and while she’d been caught on the fringes of a camera field-of-view once or twice, no one had been perceptive enough to notice the discrepancies—or they’d chalked it up to a processing mix-up. But this was a digital, and he’d already noticed the discrepancies.

She’d have to find a moment to erase those pictures—turn them into a puzzling memory instead of damning evidence.

A final turn and she cruised to the curb of a residential street. A few years of following people for her boss had built a detailed map of this city in her head; as soon as Madonna had given her the refuge house addresses, she’d known the neighborhoods, the fastest way to get there, the hindrances they might encounter. This particular neighborhood offered tree-lined sidewalks, maple trees in the yards, sparse fall landscaping around the houses. Nothing too fancy, just close-set homes with deceptively long backyards—and, if she remembered correctly, an active neighborhood watch program.

“This one?” Jeth asked, looking intently out the window at the house in front of which they parked.

“Two down,” she told him. “And you’re staying here.”

He gave her his complete attention, mouth tugging to the side in dry amusement, dark gray-blue gaze riveted on her face.

And there it was again, that unfamiliar feeling that he could truly see her. If anyone could, it would be this man. A terrifying thought, and a beguiling one. To be touched by someone who knew the real Sam….

Except he was saying, “What makes you think so?”

And in exasperation she responded, “You won’t find her here, Jeth. She’s
gone.
You’ve got to let her go.”

He blinked in total lack of comprehension. “Let her go? This is my
sister.
I’m just supposed to forget she ever existed?”

Typical. “It’s not about
you.
You’re supposed to accept that this was her choice, not yours.”

“To leave her whole family behind? To spend the rest of her life living a lie? You must be kidding.”

She unfastened her seat belt with more of a snap than she’d meant to, hand on the door latch. “Yes. Just exactly that. And I’m not kidding.”

He shook his head, mirroring her actions and ready to get out of the car. “I’m not going to stop looking.” He pushed the door open; the overhead light came on.

She grabbed the tough material of his jacket and yanked, catching him off balance. The door closed enough to turn out the light, but enough streetlight remained to see him, only inches away now, incredulous and furious.

His hand closed over hers on his jacket. “You do this to people,” he said, grinding the words out in accusation. “You take them from their families. You turn their lives into a game of deceit.”

“That’s right!” She snapped the words back at him,
not trying to escape his grasp—just as he didn’t fight hers. Face-to-face, glare-to-glare. She whose whole life was nothing but one big game of deceit and the man who knew nothing but honesty. “By the time they reach us they’re desperate and some of them are one step away from dead. By the time they get to us,
everyone else has failed them.
”

He jerked as though slapped; the anger turned to miserable guilt. Not a man who could hide his feelings any more than he could hide his nature. “I
tried,
” he said, and seemed to realize how tightly he held her injured hand, releasing his grip slowly to turn the contact into a lighter, more apologetic touch. “Dammit, I—”

He looked away, took a shaky breath. She gave him the moment, and then said quietly, “I guess you probably did. But it wasn’t enough. For whatever reason it just wasn’t enough. She wouldn’t have come to us if it had been.” She uncrimped her fingers from his jacket, suppressing a wince, and then, after an uncertain hesitation, let them land on his arm in a more comforting touch, however briefly. “Now she’s gone, Jeth. You don’t have to understand or accept it to make it so. But…I think you’d be a lot happier if you could.”

He took another deep breath, looked back into her eyes, and said firmly, “Jethro.”

She sat back. “You could be named an unpronounceable symbol—the man formerly known as Jethro—and you still wouldn’t come to that door with me.”

He snorted as he, too, sat back, and then he gave his mustache a quick one-fingered stroke and said, “I’m not going to just sit here.”

“Fine,” she said promptly, totally resisting the urge to let her fingers follow in the path of his. “I could use
someone to watch the street. It’s the middle of the night—there shouldn’t be anyone else out here. So if there is, you can let me know.”

“And who are we expecting?”

She stumbled over telling him, but the word was already out on the street. No longer a secret of any kind. “Does the name Scalpucci sound familiar?”

She’d succeeded in surprising him—she wasn’t sure if it was because of the name or simply because she’d answered his question. She nodded and said, “We’ve helped his wife. We’re pretty sure he’s behind the van bomb—he knew his wife wasn’t there, but it’s just like him to punish us for resisting him—and I bet his people are the ones who found Madonna. If
you
could find her—”

“Gee. Thanks.”

“Don’t even try to guilt me out on that one. You’re out of your league and you know it. I think that’s why—”
why you make such an impact on me.
But somehow she didn’t say it, even though she just that suddenly recognized it. He was out of his league and he wasn’t giving up. Unlike those in her early life who’d never made the effort to search out the real Sam—who were satisfied with the facade she gave them—he cared enough to keep trying.

He waited.

She pulled herself together and said, “The point is, Madonna told Scalpucci’s people—or someone’s people—about two of our houses. This is one of them. I’m not sure why it’s still so peaceful and quiet here…they should have been able to beat us here.”

Jeth nodded at the house, two doors down. “Maybe they did.”

Yeah. Point to him. Maybe she and Jeth had wasted
all this time in the car while those in the refuge house were hurt or even dead. Sam hoped Gretchen Scalpucci had been moved out of the city by this point, but she didn’t know. The woman might well be inside that house. “Let’s go,” she told him. “But don’t come up the drive. You understand that if you alarm the woman who runs this house, she’ll close the door and we won’t learn anything one way or the other.”

He nodded, and she reached for her door handle—but didn’t quite open it before reminding him, “Either way, you won’t find your sister here. And that woman won’t tell you anything even if she knows it. She won’t tell
me,
either. That’s the way we work.”

His jaw tightened at that; she saw the resistance in his expression. He wouldn’t argue, but he still didn’t quite believe it.

He’d learn.

They exited the car together; Sam stood in the crisp night air a moment, feeling out all the aches and pains that had settled in after the inactivity of driving. Nothing more than pavement bruises and of course her hands; she flexed them inside the gloves and reaccustomed herself to the sting of it. “The sidewalk,” she reminded him, and strode off toward the house.

Just another home on the street, complete with late-season marigolds in the front landscaping and a lawn ornament or two against the bushes lining the house. She approached the three-step landing, a little concrete number with a short wrought iron railing; the house looked dark inside, showing only a diffuse glow from some interior night-light. A glance back at Jethro showed him slowly strolling away down the sidewalk, as obvious as ever. She bit her lip on a grin, surprised by the sudden
affection the sight gave her. And it didn’t matter how obvious he was—if Scalpucci’s men were here, then all the better if they thought the underground had put a watch on this place.

And then she looked up into a silent rush of darkness and realized that oh, yeah, Scalpucci’s men were here. At least one of them.
This
one. He loomed up from the bushes and grabbed her before she truly registered his presence, one hand clamping tightly on her wrist. Way too tightly—it hurt, dammit. She gave an involuntary hiss of anger and protest, jerking her hand within the grip and giving herself a good hard internal kick. It simply hadn’t occurred to her that Scalpucci would send anyone to
lurk.
To bully and break in and cause havoc, yes. But to lurk?

Unless he’d already been inside and she’d merely interrupted his departure. She gave the house a wild glance, hunting for hidden signs of distress and disturbance within. Its implacable exterior stared back at her, telling her nothing.

Her knee-jerk reaction to break free had gained her nothing; he hadn’t even readjusted his hold. Damned gorilla. She’d barely gotten started—

He gave her a little shake. “You’re one of them.” It wasn’t a question.

“And you’re one of
them,
” she retorted, glaring at him through the darkness. She couldn’t pin down so much as a single feature; she might recognize him again from his movement, but not from his face.

He gave her another shake, rattling her from wrist to shoulder to neck and jaw. “Where’s Gretchen Scalpucci?”

She shrugged ever so slightly, deliberately not thinking about the moment—not thinking about escape. If she
thought about it, if she tried to plan her move, she’d only stumble over herself. But if she just waited, if she just
was,
then when the right moment came she’d take it.

She only hoped Jethro didn’t turn around and notice them before then.

“Listen, you little bitch—you give me what I need and I won’t have to throw you through that window to get the attention of the women in that house. They can sleep right on through the night.”

“What makes you think they’re sleeping now?” she asked. “What makes you think anyone’s there at all, after what you people pulled in the west end?”

“A bitch who thinks she’s cute. Just what I need.”

She got only a glimpse of his scowl, but it was enough. And his shift of weight—enough.
He’s going to do it, the son of a bitch—right through the window
—

He pulled her in closer, bent to pick her up; he lifted her off the ground with no apparent effort and she let him, snarling inside at his carelessly rude touch and managing what sounded like a startled and helpless squeak. He didn’t straighten, but repositioned himself, preparing to toss her like a discus.
Right through the window
—

The instant he started to unwind, Sam took advantage of the energy and movement he supplied, flipping herself backward out of his arms.

In a perfect world, she would have landed on her toes, maybe with a little support from her fingertips. In this world, this night, she fell heavily forward, hitting her knees and sprawling onto her hands. The abraded skin lit like fire within her borrowed gloves, tearing open scabs and tipping off her temper. She snarled, abandoned any thought of tackling this ape on her own, and
twisted to leap for escape and those front steps. It wouldn’t take much to alert whoever stood vigil here, even a good scream—

Maybe he read her mind. He threw himself after her, belly-flopping atop her hard enough to knock every bit of air from her lungs. Son of a— She might as well have left the Kel-Tec at home. It might be meant for just this kind of encounter, but there was no way she’d reach it, not with her hips grinding into the thin lawn and the holstered Kel-Tec trapped in her back pocket between them. She flailed around the edges of the landscaping, hunting something,
anything,
that she might use against him.

That’s when she realized he’d done more than flattened her; he shoved his distinctly hardened anatomy against her bottom with discovery and purpose. “You!” she spat, hunting air. “You—
disgusting
—”

He lowered his face to her ear, his hands braced against the ground on either side of her head. “Two orders,” he said, as though whispering sweet nothings. “Find Gretchen Scalpucci. Leave the rest of you humiliated. I’d had other plans for the house, but this—” he grunted slightly, pushing against her, intrusive even through their clothing. “This is good, too.”

“
Not
good!” she panted, what little air she had disappearing under his increasing weight. “Wasn’t Madonna enough fun for the night?”