SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (28 page)

"Marty always liked it," she said defensively. "He bought it in a Mexican market in San Antonio.”

"You still miss him, don’t you?"

"Marty was one of a kind," she said evasively.

"And me? Am I one of a kind, Maggie?"

"If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be sharing my bed, Sam Bartholomew.” She swatted at him with mock fierceness.

"Has anyone ever told you you’re pretty special yourself?"

Sam hugged her around the waist from behind. She swayed her hips against him and leaned her head to the side so that he could nuzzle her neck. "No one, but you, Sam. Only you."

"When this thing’s over..." His sentence went unfinished.

Maggie moved the frying pan of eggs onto a cold burner and turned in his arms to kiss him. "What are you planning?”

"I’m not good at planning, but I was thinking maybe we could take a trip. Do you have some vacation time coming?"

"I can take the time. Where do you want to go?"

Sam kissed her once then released her to drink his coffee at the table. Maggie returned the eggs to the heat and flipped them.

"Oh, I don’t know. Georgia, the Florida Keys, Atlantic City--someplace east of here where there aren’t any cowboys."

"I’ve never been to the Keys," she said dreamily, sliding the fried eggs onto Sam’s plate.

Sam spoke between bites while Maggie prepared her own eggs and bacon.

"Okay, the Keys. That’s where a lot of old fogies retire, along the Gold Coast."

Maggie turned from her cooking to stare at him. "You retired once, Sam. You can see it didn’t work out too well."

"You know why I’m on this case." He sounded defensive.

"And what will the excuse be on the next case?" Maggie asked, bringing her plate to the table and sitting across from him.

"No next case, Maggie. They have my papers. I’m not going back on the force."

"Bull." Maggie vigorously cut up her eggs until the yokes ran and soaked into her toast.

"What does that mean, ‘bull’?"

"You never retired, Sam, don’t you know that? You might’ve fooled yourself, but you haven’t fooled me."

"It’s just because of Willie and Jack…"

Maggie put down her fork and stared incredulously at him. "If it hadn’t been Jack, it would have been someone else, even a stranger. I watched you unravel for six months, Sam. You tried crawling into the bottle, but you didn’t quite manage it. You’ve never had enough practice giving up. You don’t know how to give up. You might have thought you did when you asked for early retirement, but you’re a lousy liar."

"I’m sixty years old, Maggie. The system beat me. Not once, but a dozen times. I’m too old to fight anymore." But Sam did not sound quite sure about what he said.

"One more word like that and I’ll dump these eggs right on your head, Sam Bartholomew! Do you hear what you’re saying? Do you hear how asinine you sound? Since when did sixty years signal the end of a life? All it means is that you have forty years of experience as a cop. I’m sixty, and I don’t damn well think of myself as..." Suddenly Maggie realized what she had admitted, and lowered her eyes in embarrassment.

Then she laughed. "Okay, so I’m sixty too. You knew that anyway, didn’t you?"

Sam reached across the lace tablecloth and took her hand. "What do I care how old you are?"

"I look pretty good for my age," she said defensively.

"You feel pretty good too, considering.”

Maggie squeezed his hand for the compliment and blushed. "But we were talking about you." She stood up and went to Sam, making him scoot his chair back so that she could sit in his lap. "You’re not the old-fogie type," she said, running a hand over his face. "I can’t see you retiring to Florida to play shuffleboard and bridge. There’s too much going on up here." She lightly tapped his head. "Maybe you don’t have to rejoin the police department. There are other alternatives for a man with your experience and talents."

"For instance."

"For instance, a private detective agency. Houston needs a good one."

The idea was so foreign to Sam that he was speechless.

“I’ve been talking to some people I know," she continued. "Don’t forget I’ve been involved with the law for almost as long as you have, and I have a few connections in this town too. You don’t spend your life as a court reporter without knowing some of the best people on a first name basis."

"What have you done, Maggie? Fixed me up with a job?"

"Not a job, Sam. A profession. Not everyone has forgotten the Bartholomew legend."

Sam grunted, his brows knitting.

"I know you don’t like that designation, but it’s something that’s happened whether you wanted it to or not. Why do you think they wanted you as consultant on this Wireman thing? If you were washed up, they would have told you so. You have a reputation, Sam, and you should use it. There are people who would love to invest in your future, and you’re sitting around talking retirement. You want to pretend sixty years makes a handicap. But you’re wrong, and you’re proving it by working with Garbo."

Sam knew Maggie was right. What did he want--a rotten end to his life with a bottle of Old Kentucky in his paw or no reason to get up in the morning? "You realize it’s unforgivable to interfere without talking to me about it first, don’t you?" he asked.

Maggie ignored the criticism. "If I could get the backing you need to open an office, would you do it? I’d even throw in my services as your secretary, accountant, file clerk--anything you want me to be. I’ve been in court one too many days as it is, and I’m ready for a change. Can’t you see the sign on the door? Bartholomew Investigations."

"Maggie, you’re not only the sexiest woman around, but you’re the craziest too. "

"Why don’t you think it over? " Maggie drew her plate of cooling eggs across the table and began to eat.

Sam caressed the swell of her hip and wondered if he had time to take her to bed before she left for the courthouse.

"Well?" she persisted. "Will you think about it?"

"Bartholomew Investigations, huh?"

"Yep, gotta trade on your name, Sam. It’ll bring in business, " Maggie said.

"Okay, I’ll think about it. No promises..." He held up a finger in warning when he saw her eyes light up.

"But I’ll give it a little thought."

"Finish your breakfast, and if we hurry, you might give a little thought to something else."

Sam grinned at the woman on his lap. She was an absolute mind reader. For the first time in months he did not feel his age. Sixty was not the end of life after all.

NICK ANSWERED the phone on the second ring.

"Are you coming in today?" Apex Alarm’s manager asked. "We really need the help, Nick."

"I quit."

"What?" the manager asked, not sure he had heard correctly.

"I said I quit," Nick repeated. "I won’t be coming in anymore."

"But Nick, what’s wrong?"

Nick hung up the phone and moved from the hall table beneath the stairs. He was incredibly hungry. His stomach rumbled from being empty too long.

In the kitchen he rummaged through the refrigerator. He found a foil-wrapped Hostess Twinkie, but the milk was gone. In the cabinet he searched for an envelope of instant hot-chocolate mix and found one crushed behind cans of green beans and corn. He ran the water from the sink faucet until it was hot, and made cocoa.

There was no place at the dining table where he could sit. The four chairs were broken and lying in heaps on the floor. The tabletop was littered with crusty dishes, empty cereal boxes, and two spatulas yellow with dried egg.

He sat on the floor amid the ruins and ate the cream-filled cake and drank the tepid cocoa. His stomach still growled.

He returned to the kitchen and opened a can of stewed tomatoes and ate them standing at the counter. He drank the leftover juice and felt his stomach relax a little.

Everything was the same. The same as when he had lost his temper with Daley on Thursday and wrecked the house. The living room was a shambles. He stepped carefully over a broken lamp and sat down on the sofa. He switched on the TV. It was the only untouched object in the room.

A church choir wavered hazily on the small screen. With the sound turned off, Nick could almost bear to watch. After a few minutes, he restlessly changed the channel. Sunday morning ministries. All the same.

All of them after his soul.

He changed the channel again. A black preacher standing behind a pulpit jabbed his fist into the air.

Another channel. A white-haired minister was dressed in a black robe with a scarlet band down the front.

Nick turned up the sound and listened to the civilized voice.

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings."

Nick immediately turned off the sound. He cocked his head and studied the robed man. Perhaps there was a message there. He turned the sound up again.

"Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil." Savagely Nick switched off the TV and stared at the dot fading in the center of the screen as if daring it to leap into life again.

He left the living room and went to his bedroom. On the floor lay the box and the silently entreating garrote. He bent down and picked up the wire with two fingers. It swung easily, the wooden handles clacking.

"The heart is deceitful..."

He was in the heart of the foul Viet Cong cave, and it was deceitful. The man, his enemy, lurked in the subterranean dark, waiting with held breath and pumping fear.

I will get you
, Nick thought.

"and desperately wicked..."

There is no one more wicked than you, no one more deadly
.

Footsteps sounded behind him, and he wanted to push his brother away, push him into the night.

I have come for you
, Nick thought.
The dark won’t hide you and there’s no escape.

"…to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings."

Nick was near enough to the Cong to feel the enemy’s heat, his scent. Those seconds, just like the moments before sexual orgasm, could not be prolonged; it was no longer in his control.

I am here, next to your flesh, able to take you into my arms. There is nowhere to run and nothing, nothing to fear.

"Be not a terror unto me…"

He looped the wire around the neck and there was panting, then cursing, and finally pleading for mercy
.

Footsteps neared, faltered, and stopped. The cave ceased being a part of the world. The wire tightened.

Muscles corded along the insides of his arms, his knees locked, his legs strained, and his toes curled under in his boots. He felt hot.

Don’t fight me now that I’ve won. You can ruin everything if you struggle
.

"…my hope in the day of evil."

The enemy fell, body and head, the air rich and bitter with the metallic scent of fresh blood. His arms went slack. His mighty erection thumped with sudden, exquisite release. A flame illuminated a haloed brother
.

"I’m right here,” Nick said calmly. "You don’t have to be afraid anymore, Daley. I’ll always take care of you."

The flame hissed against the shadows.

Daley wept in Nick’s arms.

Nick felt a demon at his side and welcomed the punishment. There was no need to cry.

AT TEN-THIRTY in the evening, a half-hour before the shift was over, Sam Bartholomew’s gaze was riveted to the front of the Ringer house.

"The shade," he croaked, hardly believing what he had just seen. "He raised the shade."

Patty and Jack, playing cards in the backseat, turned in unison to look at the house.

"No lights," Jack said.

Patty scooped up the cards and slipped them into a cardboard case. "What’s it mean?" he asked, fumbling with the pack of cards.

"I think he knows we’re here," Sam said. He crouched in the seat and pulled his hat low over his eyes. "Get down."

A light came on somewhere inside the house. For four days there had been no light showing behind the drawn shades. A shadow moved past the door and windows.

"What’s he doing?" Patty asked nervously. "You think he’s gonna come out?"

"Shut up, Patty. Jack, get up here with me," Sam commanded.

Jack obeyed. He rolled down the window and watched the house. The wait seemed interminable. Patty squirmed in the backseat until Sam stilled him with a glance. Jack unconsciously brushed his fingers over the scar on his cheek. Sam squinted past Jack’s profile. He had his right foot resting lightly on the accelerator and his hand itched to turn the ignition key.

Steady, steady
, he told himself.
Don’t panic and fuck up now.

The front door of the house opened, and Nick was silhouetted in the light from within. He wore a light-colored sweater over an open-necked shirt and beige sport slacks. He carried a bowling bag.

"What the hell!" Jack turned to Sam in bewilderment. "He’s going bowling?"

"Jesus Christ. We’ve staked out a guy for four days and he goes bowling," Patty said.

“Both of you shut up and stay down." Sam knew he sounded like a snapping dog, but he couldn’t help it.

Nick walked to the Chrysler and unlocked the door on the driver’s side. He tossed the bowling bag on the seat, then abruptly turned and looked straight across the street to the men hiding in the unmarked car.

"He made us," Jack said. His knees were up against the dashboard and he was leaning toward the middle of the seat.

They heard the engine of the Chrysler sputter and catch. It roared into life and the tires squealed as the car left the curb.

All three policemen straightened and Sam started the Plymouth Fury. He jerked the wheel to the right and crossed the street, cut through the median turnaround, and followed the dwindling taillights of Nick’s car.

Jack had the tracking device on, the bird-dog beeper on the Chrysler sending strong signals.

"He’s trying to lose us," Sam said, watching the side streets ahead for oncoming cars.