Читать книгу Against the Night - Kat Martin - Страница 11

Five

Johnnie backed the Mustang out of the garage and headed down the hill. A freakin’ schoolteacher. Jesus, just his luck.

At least his instincts hadn’t been wrong.

He shifted in the seat, trying to get comfortable. He’d had a hard-on nonstop since the first time he had seen Angel at the club.

Not Angel, he corrected himself. Amy. Amy Brewer. Kindergarten teacher.

Christ, how much worse could it get?

“Nice car,” she said, drawing his attention back to the moment.

“Four-hundred-twelve horses under the hood of this little beauty.”

As they passed beneath a streetlight, he caught her soft smile. “When I was in high school, my dad had a Stingray. It was old, but it was hot. He was a mechanic, great with cars. Once in a while, he’d let me drive it.”

“You like cars?”

“I do…yes. I love speed. I like to go fast—when it’s safe. I like the sound a car makes when you step on the gas. I guess I picked it up from my dad.”

His lips faintly curved. The lady was just full of surprises. “So, your dad still around?” If he was, the guy had to be crazy to let his daughter get involved in something as dangerous as this.

“He died three years ago. He was cutting firewood. Tree split wrong. He was killed instantly.”

He could read the sorrow in her face. “That’s too bad.”

“My mom’s back in Grand Rapids. She didn’t want me to come out here.”

Imagine that.

“She’s afraid something will happen. She said losing one daughter was enough.”

He tossed a glance her way as he made the turn off Laurel Canyon onto Sunset and merged with the traffic. “Your mother’s right. Snooping around the way you’ve been doing…that’s dangerous business, honey.”

“Maybe, but so far I haven’t found out much of anything. I’m hoping tomorrow will be different.”

“What time’s your appointment?”

“Two o’clock at Kyle’s house. He lives in Bel Air so it isn’t that far a drive.”

“Bel Air, huh? Pretty ritzy for a scumbag. You got a car?”

“Babs is lending me hers.”

“I need your cell number. Write it down on a piece of paper.”

She pulled a pen out of her purse and scribbled the number on the back of a Kitty Cat Club napkin she dug out of the bottom.

Johnnie pulled into the parking lot and stopped beside the rear entrance. “If Tate gives you any trouble about being out with a customer, tell him I’m helping you with a personal problem. He knows what I do for a living. That should be enough to keep him off your back.”

“All right.” Amy handed him the napkin, opened the car door and got out. He rolled down his window as she walked around to his side of the car.

“I’ll call you late morning,” he said, handing her a business card. “We need to work out the details before you go in. And I need to talk to your sister’s friend Barbara. Can you make that happen?”

“Babs usually sleeps till noon, but I can get her up a little early.”

“I’ll call, set up a place for us to meet.”

She just nodded. “Thank you, Johnnie. I really appreciate this.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He watched her walk into the club and realized it bothered him to think of her working in there. She was a schoolteacher, for chrissake. She shouldn’t be dancing naked in a goddamned tittie bar.

He sighed as he turned the car around and drove away. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Except find her sister. Then he could send her sweet little schoolteacher ass back to Michigan where it belonged.

Amy usually slept late on her day off, but her nerves were strung too tight. Instead, as the sun came up, she dressed in a pair of white stretch Levi’s and a pink T-shirt, left Babs asleep in the apartment, and walked a block down the street to a little espresso bar called The Caboose.

“I’ll have a skinny double-shot latte,” she said to the barista, a dark-haired girl with braces who didn’t look old enough to be out of high school. With a chocolate biscotti in one hand and the coffee in the other, Amy sat down at one of the small square tables.

She reached over to the table next to hers and picked up an L.A. Times someone had left behind. She did a quick perusal, checked the local news, which was nothing but murder and mayhem, the weather, which never changed in sunny California, and the comics, which at least made her smile.

When she finished her coffee, she headed back to the apartment and found Babs up and dressed in jeans and an orange tank top. Babs was extremely big busted so no matter what she wore, she looked top heavy, as if she would topple onto the floor if she leaned too far over.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Amy said.

“My cell phone rang and woke me up,” Babs grumbled. “Wrong number, can you believe?”

“Why didn’t you just go back to sleep?”

“You said the Ranger wanted to talk to me. I figured I might as well get up and get ready.”

Last night, Babs had still been awake when Amy got home. Her friend had been worried, she knew, though Babs would never admit it. Amy had told her all the gory details, how she had made a fool of herself by reneging on her sex-for-work proposal and how John Riggs had again behaved as a gentleman.

“Johnnie was really great last night,” Amy said. “I was starting to freak and he knew it. He didn’t push me. He agreed to help anyway.”

Babs scoffed. “Don’t expect the same treatment from Kyle Bennett. Your sister said he was a real horse’s ass.”

Amy grinned, having no difficulty imagining her outspoken sister saying something like that. The grin slid away. “I’m not looking forward to meeting him, especially not at his house. I feel a lot better knowing Johnnie is going to be helping us.”

“You can say that again.”

Amy paced over to the window. The room they shared wasn’t glamorous, their only view the parking lot below. Still, she felt safe here, with Bo Jing and Tate to look after them, Dante and the rest of the crew. In the beginning, she had worried that someone Rachael had worked with might have been responsible for her disappearance, but Tate screened his employees well and after she got to know the men she worked with, she didn’t believe they’d had anything to do with it.

Along with that, no men were allowed upstairs, which was one of the reasons the girls liked living there. They could work, pay cheap rent and save their money, and not be hassled by drunken Kitty Cat patrons.

Amy walked over to the kitchen counter, where Babs was making coffee. “Do you think he’ll be able to find out what happened to her?”

Babs pressed the start button on the coffeemaker. She knew what Amy was asking. “In a city this size, women disappear all the time. Some of them are never seen again.”

A cold chill slipped through her. “You mean their bodies are never found.”

“I’m sorry, honey, but yeah. That’s what I mean.”

“We pretend she’s still out there, but I’m not sure either of us really believes it.”

“Oh, she’s out there. We just don’t know if she’s alive or not. Until we’re sure one way or another, we’ll do whatever it takes to find out.”

Amy felt better just hearing the words. They wouldn’t give up—not until they knew what had happened. She could handle Kyle Bennett. He was just a man and their plan was a good one. At least it was a place to start.

And now she had John Riggs to help her.

Johnnie climbed the short flight of steps and shoved through the front door of the redbrick building on North Wilcox Avenue. The Hollywood Community Police Station handled La Brea, Sunset, Hollywood and a half dozen surrounding communities.

First thing this morning, he had run a check on Amy Brewer. Looked like she was exactly what she said—a kindergarten teacher from Grand Rapids. He groaned. Last night’s hot kiss popped into his head and he thought how much he still wanted her, bit down on a curse and forced his mind back to business.

He’d also run Rachael Brewer’s name, and read the few newspaper articles about her disappearance he’d found on the Net and anything else he could find about her. It was a start, but not much help.

Making his way over to the counter in the police station, he recognized Officer Gwen Michaels working behind the front desk.

“Hey, Gwen.”

She looked up at him and a smile broke over her face. “Johnnie! You devil, where you been? And don’t tell me you’ve been staying out of trouble, ’cause that just ain’t happenin’, honey.”

Johnnie grinned. “Trouble’s my middle name, Gwen. You know that.”

“Sure do. So what can I do for you, J-man?” Officer Michaels was in her twenties, black and gorgeous. And a damn fine officer on top of it.

“Is Detective Vega around? I need to pick his brain a little.”

“I think he left a while ago, but let me check for you.” She rotated her stool toward the computer on the desk in front of her, checked the monitor. “He’s out on a call, not due back until the end of the day.”

“Leave him a message, will you? Ask him to give me a call when he gets in?”

“No problem.”

“Thanks, Gwen.”

“Take care, J-man.”

He chuckled. She always called him that. He wondered why he’d never asked her out. Probably because she was a cop. When he got off work, police business was the last thing he wanted to think about.

He headed for the door, wishing Vega had been in but figuring he could count on the detective’s help. He didn’t get much resistance from the LAPD. In fact, he could usually depend on their cooperation with just about anything. His younger sister, Kate, had been an LAPD patrolman. Four years ago, Katie had died in the line of duty during a bank robbery. At the time, Johnnie had been in Mexico on some shit boat-recovery job for J. D. Wendel, one of the dot-com billionaires. The eighty-foot, million-plus Lazzara was chump change for Wendel, but the man wasn’t about to let one of his employees get away with stealing it from him.

As Johnnie walked back to his car, he remembered returning to the States to find out he’d lost the sister he adored and his chest tightened. Katie was the only real family he’d had. He sure didn’t count the deadbeat dad who’d raised them in a crappy apartment off Los Feliz Boulevard.

Max Riggs only worked hard enough to keep the power turned on and put a little food on the table. The rest of the time he was hustling some sucker out of his paycheck, or drinking and gambling with his buddies down at Pete’s bar. With their mother long gone and never to be heard from again, Johnnie and Katie were left to fend for themselves.

He’d finally gotten over his mother’s abandonment, though as a kid, he’d often wondered what he and Katie had done to drive her away.

As he grew older, he liked to think he’d had some part in how well his kid sister had turned out. He had worked two jobs to buy her the clothes she needed for school. After he joined the army, he’d sent money for city college, where she took classes in police science and finally landed the spot she so badly wanted on the force. Katie had been well respected in the department, intelligent and competent, a young woman dedicated to her job.

Officer Kate Riggs had been part of the police family, and with her death in the line of duty, forever would be.

Which made him family, too.

Sort of.

His Mustang sat at the curb. Johnnie slid behind the wheel and fired up the engine. Sooner or later, he’d talk to Vega, who wasn’t just a good cop but also a friend. In the meantime, he’d see what information he could pry out of Rachael’s sister and her friend.

Amy’s pretty face popped into his head, only she wasn’t Amy, she was Angel, flaunting her beautiful, mostly naked body up onstage. He could remember every delicious curve, every swing of her perfect little ass.

Johnnie closed his eyes, forcing the image away. It wasn’t Angel he was helping. It was Amy, a freakin’ kindergarten teacher.

Johnnie cursed.