Читать книгу Trust With Your Life - M.L. Gamble - Страница 6

February 14

Molly Jakes grabbed her cellular phone out of the front seat compartment and slammed the car door. She glanced at her watch, grimaced at the 11:53 reading and stuck the phone in her purse. Slinging the strap over her left shoulder, she shivered and buttoned her coat.

Fog drooped down like gray flannel from the starless sky, refracting light from the surrounding buildings into a bright blur. Molly shielded her eyes against the glare. She could just make out the shape of the Summer Point Towers office complex a few yards away to which she had been summoned.

Checking to be sure she had locked her car door, Molly headed toward the bulky form ahead, holding her arms close to her body. It was February and forty-two degrees—cold, very cold for California.

It was also one of the last places Molly would have wanted to be if she had been given a choice. Handling service complaints against her telephone installation crew was part of her job. But being called out on Valentine’s Day from the warm bed she had collapsed into three hours before seemed above and beyond, she thought grumpily. As she got near enough to the building to see the glass doors of the entrance, she attempted to shake off her rotten mood.

But her brain wasn’t through grousing. It was bad enough to be thirty-four and to go to bed alone on the traditional lovers’ holiday because there was no likely lover within a hundred yards of her life. But to finally get to sleep only to be awakened by a shrill phone ring followed by a leering, male voice that taunted, “Hey, Jakes, I hope I’m not interrupting your big night...” Those sweet words were spoken by Jerry Williams, one of the more obnoxiously chauvinistic dispatchers, a man she had less respect for than a cockroach.

The heavy glass door swishing closed behind her, Molly finally managed to lay to rest her slightly self-pitying thoughts and take a deep breath. Hey, even cockroaches were entitled to their fun, she reminded herself. Another day, another buck. Think of the town house you want to buy. That’s why you took this promotion, remember? So you could earn enough money to buy some overpriced California real estate all by yourself. And this is how you do it. So be quiet and be happy you’ve got such a good job when a couple of million people are out of work.

Standing in front of the lobby directory, Molly searched out the office number for the alarm company she was seeking. She found Inscrutable Security listed in Suite 330.

She pressed the elevator button with a finger stiff from the cold and rode up alone, composing an all-purpose apology for the owner of Inscrutable, one Frederick Brooker, which she hoped would serve the situation.

Williams hadn’t been clear about the problem but said that the foreman was having dial-tone problems with another telecommunications line carrier, that the crew was going to blow the installation deadline and that they “requested, as per union guarantee, you know,” Jerry had crowed, “a manager type ASAP to run interference” with an unhappy client.

The steel doors slid open and Molly disembarked, peering to the left, then the right. Small painted numbers on the marble-faced wall across from the elevator directed her to the left.

Just her luck. The hall lights to her left were off. She took a few tentative steps into the gloom and stopped. A door eight feet away was marked 320, which meant 330 was several yards farther along into the unseeable.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” Molly muttered into the silence. She squared her shoulders and headed down the carpeted hallway. The air inside the building smelled of salt water as strongly as it had outside. The Pacific was only a few blocks away, and the building’s decor was typical of the growing beach town of Summer Point, sixty miles from L.A. Seascapes, painted rattan pictures and a collage of hemp and polished shells hanging on the walls she passed reinforced the style.

She stopped in the darkness and peered at the information on a doorway.

Suite 328 California Psychiatric Clinic, Inc.

Dr. T. Kahn/Dr. A. Chen/Dr. S. Thompkins

Molly grinned. “Not a bad time to get my head examined,” she said aloud, immediately feeling foolish to be talking to the woodwork. She also scolded herself for feeling so ill at ease. She was an experienced professional. This was a safe part of the county. Chill out, Molly, she ordered her thoughts.

Hurrying to the next door, Molly practically had to put her nose to the wood to read.

Suite 330 Inscrutable Security

A thin line of light escaping under the door spilled over her toes. She allowed a sigh of relief. Resting her hand on the doorknob, she turned it, eager to get inside even if it was to confront an angry client.

But the door was locked. Molly turned harder, but the knob didn’t budge. She raised her fist to knock, then heard the sound of a small chime and snapped her head to the right in the direction of the elevator. Someone was coming up. She was quickly reminded of the fact that she had not seen the security guard in the lobby her dispatcher had told her to check in with.

Was it the guard?

The hiss of the elevator’s air brakes told her she would soon find out. Despite her earlier admonitions to herself, Molly’s heart began to race. She remembered she had pepper spray in her purse, as well as her phone, which had nice, big buttons. She banged her knuckles against the door in a more frantic rhythm than she had intended and glanced toward the elevator. A husky, dark-skinned man wearing a black jacket and black pants, carrying a bright orange gym bag, stepped into the shadows and began walking briskly in her direction.

She only saw his face for a second, but it shocked her, mostly because she recognized him even though they had never met. The man with the bag was Paul Buntz. He had been a local sportscaster in Los Angeles when she was growing up, though she hadn’t heard anything about him for years.

Reacting to her fears, Molly reached into her purse. At that moment, the door she was leaning against opened and she gave a little yelp. Off balance, she nearly tumbled inside. A tall, very tanned blond man stared at her, his blue eyes narrowing when he caught the movement of her hand into her purse.

“What’s this about then, miss?” he demanded, his deep voice full of the lilt and music of a native Australian.

“I’m—I’m sorry, Mr. Brooker, is it?” She removed her hand and extended it, then threw a glance down the gloomy hallway. Paul Buntz was nowhere in sight.

“No, I’m not Brooker. You got business with him?”

Molly noted that the man seemed to dig his boot-clad heels into the thick carpeting, while managing to lean back and tower over her all at once. He crossed his arms and looked more angry than wary now.

“I’m sorry. Yes, I do have business with Mr. Brooker. My name is Molly Jakes. I’m a field supervisor with Pacific Communications. I’ve got a crew of men on the premises, and they called me out to assist with a problem.”

Her hands fell to her sides and she tried a smile out on the stranger. “I’m sorry if I startled you, but there was a man in the hallway and I got a little spooked.”

The blond man quickly brushed by her and stuck his head out for a look, then he took her by the arm and moved her into the office. He closed the door.

He locked it.

Molly took a few steps toward an empty receptionist’s desk, watching the Australian lean against the wall and quite openly appraise her from head to toe.

His very blue eyes finally came to rest on Molly’s face. “No one there now, love. Shouldn’t be sending a chit like yourself out alone in the dead of night, if you ask me. What’s your boss thinking?”

Molly straightened her back as the muscles in her face tightened. It was the nineties, but some men still lagged a century behind in their regard for women, she reminded herself. But why did a modern-day Neanderthal have to look like this guy?

“Well, this is only a guess, but I’d say he’s thinking he had a job to get done so he sent the person responsible for doing it. Are my men from Pacific Communications here in this suite, do you know?”

His smile grew wider at Molly’s challenging tone. “Just me. But I saw a van and a crowd of chaps with hard hats and the like around back at the receiving dock when I came up a few minutes ago. Probably your crew. Can I walk you down?”

“No, thank you,” Molly replied, not liking the fact that her voice held more sarcasm than was really necessary. She realized the stranger was getting the brunt of what she’d wanted to say to her dispatcher. Molly prided herself on doing a great job in a field overwhelmingly populated by men—the majority of whom felt pretty much like this guy did about women—without letting their jibes rankle her. She tried hard to smile sincerely and reached into her bag for a business card.

With a snap, she left it on the desk. “If you see Mr. Brooker, would you mind telling him I’m down with the installation crew?”

The stranger raised his brows, which were bleached white by the sun. He grinned. “I’ll do it if I see him. Have a good one, love.”

Molly nodded, then hurried past him out of the office and down the dark hallway. She pushed the button for the elevator and glanced back into the darkness. She made out a tall shape and was a little annoyed to realize that the Australian stranger was watching her.

He’s being kind. Chivalrous, one side of her brain said.

He’s getting a last look at your fanny, the other said, with a bit more conviction.

Molly stepped into the elevator and stabbed at the button marked B as well as the Door Close command. Staring straight ahead, she thought about the Aussie. It wasn’t until the other passenger made a noise that Molly realized she was not alone.

Paul Buntz looked more frightened than she felt, Molly realized after the initial jolt of adrenaline surged through her. His eyes were wide and his mouth tense. She had the distinct feeling he had been expecting someone else.

His left hand was in his jacket pocket. Molly had a fleeting thought that he was carrying a gun. The orange gym bag she had noticed earlier was on the floor at his feet, as if he had dropped it.

“Hello,” she offered, her pulse racing as the elevator chugged slowly to the basement. “I’m sorry if I startled you. I’ve done that twice tonight.”

“No problem,” Buntz replied, then leaned down to retrieve the bag. He jerked it quickly upward and two computer disks tumbled out. “Damn,” he muttered, hurriedly grabbing up the small black squares as if he didn’t want Molly to see them.

She turned her eyes away, in the hopes that that would calm him down, but not before noting that the labels on the disks said Inscrutable Security. As the elevator doors opened to reveal the concrete basement, Molly stepped forward. Without looking back at the ex-sportscaster, she hurried into the well-lit garage area. No footsteps echoed behind her, so she assumed Buntz was riding back up to the lobby.

Molly heard men’s voices echoing off the thick walls, smelled gasoline and the sea and spotted a group working across the huge, open space of the office building’s basement. Rafe Amundson, foreman of the crew, was watching three other installers wrestle with a five-hundred-foot spool of cable.

“Hello, gentlemen,” Molly called out. “How’s it going?”

Three heads turned. Rafe’s didn’t. When she got to him she saw he was scowling while the installers grinned and kept working.

“Those g.d. frame rats at Gutless Electric, Inc. refuse to call out anyone to help us get dial tone, that’s how it’s going, Boss,” Rafe said as he kept his eyes on his men. “Which means out of the sixty-six special circuits we’re supposed to cut in here tonight, thirty-eight are dead. What the hell Gutless is doing still jerry-rigging its old-fashioned switching equipment is beyond me.”

“Gutless Electric” was the way Rafe and several others referred to the other local dial-tone carrier well-known for its less-than-timely resolution of problems. “I’ll go out to the van to call and get the district level out of bed,” Molly replied. “But before I do that, where’s the client?”

“Mr. Brooker disappeared with his block-long limo about an hour ago.” Rafe met her eyes and slid the wad of gum he was chewing to the other side of his mouth. “That’s one weird puppy, you ask me. Ranting and raving, strutting around, the whole time his kid sitting in the car looking like he wanted to drop off the face of the earth. He told me to tell you he had to go to meet some people who were moving his boat down to San Diego but that you weren’t to leave until the problem was fixed.”

Rafe chuckled and cracked the knuckles on his huge hands, which for thirty-five years had so ably serviced telephone customers throughout Orange County. “Guess he didn’t realize you had to get your makeup on and comb your hair before you could get out here with us peons.”

She smiled and looked pointedly at Rafe’s crumpled T-shirt, which was untucked from his grimy jeans. “You know how appearances count toward making good first impressions, Rafe.”

“Hell with that, says my union rep. The brass wants me to dress up in a monkey suit, they can give me a clothing allowance, Ms. Jakes.” Rafe spat out the gum into his hand, wadded it up and shoved it into the pocket of his jeans, then lit a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth.

Molly bit back the two dozen criticisms she was ready to voice, well aware that the three installers were listening to every word. She gave Rafe an “I’ll deal with you later” look and asked, “Where did you park the van?”

Rafe made a motion with his hand, dug out a set of car keys and handed them to her, then turned his attention back to the diagnostic equipment on the cart in front of him. Molly walked out onto the loading dock, descended the steep stairway and crossed into the nearly empty lot. The Pacific Communications van was parked in the middle. She unlocked the back doors and climbed in.

Settling down for some intercompany unpleasantness, she located the home phone number of the district manager for repair in Rafe’s call-out book. A groggy woman answered on the fourth ring and then a sleep-filled male voice picked up, a this-better-be-good edge to each word.

After five minutes of tense conversation, Molly gained his agreement to dispatch a second-level supervisor—Molly’s equal at Garrett Electric Telephone, which was Gutless Inc.’s legal name—to help the frame people fix the circuit problems.

Molly hung up the phone, turned off the van lights and sat quietly in the dark. Her neck and back ached, and the headache she had fought off announced its reappearance with a vengeance. She hugged her coat close and looked around the van for a thermos. Molly knew a cup of coffee at this hour would give her a stomachache, but she needed a hit of caffeine to shake off the fatigue.

Grabbing a badly dented, old-fashioned aluminum thermos she knew to be Rafe’s from the front seat, Molly poured coffee into a foam cup and tried to relax while she waited for reinforcements.

Her mind wandered to the blue-eyed Australian stranger on the third floor. She met a lot of men on the job. Customers, fellow employees, lawyers from the megafirm that shared the Pacific Communications building in downtown Mission Viejo. But this guy seemed different from most. While few got her blood running during an initial meeting, this man had.

Despite his beak of a nose and the craggy lines around his eyes, he was handsome in what might be described as a dangerous way. A way that made her forget what she was doing. A way that got her thinking about things she would like to be doing—with him.

He was powerfully built and what her grandmother called cocksure of himself. Molly blushed and smiled at the X-rated thoughts racing through her mind.

But there was no denying the attraction she’d felt toward him. Could it have been fate willing them to meet on a night like this? If she went upstairs later, would he still be there?

The Aussie was fresh and a bit arrogant, but very, very sexy. Definitely dangerous for a serious-minded professional woman with a plan for the next couple of years that called for hard work and all the overtime she could stand.

“Heck of a guy to meet on Valentine’s Day,” Molly murmured, then laughed aloud at her silly fantasizing. The sound of an approaching car cut short her thoughts, and she peeked out the window, wondering if Frederick Brooker was ready to reappear. Sure enough, as she watched, a long, cream-colored Lincoln limo rolled past. It stopped near the dark side of the loading dock.

Molly put her hand on the door handle, but stopped as a shape emerged from the darkness. From twenty yards away, she could not make out the face of the person in black, but the bright orange bag the man carried told her it was Paul Buntz.

The back door of the limo opened, Buntz got in and the car sped off.

So much for her confrontation with Mr. Brooker, Molly thought. With a sigh, she stepped out of the van and headed back to the crew for what she feared would be a long night.

* * *

AT SIX-THIRTY in the morning, Molly pulled out of the parking lot of Summer Point Towers. Sixty circuits into Inscrutable Security from various commercial and residential-alarm customers were at last up and running.

Frederick Brooker had not returned, though she had endured a terse phone call from him at 2:00 a.m., during which he’d promised to “report you and your crew to the Public Utilities Commission, the Better Business Bureau and the mayor’s office if those circuits aren’t up as promised!” After all, Brooker had continued, hadn’t he paid a huge advance installation bill because the credit office of Pacific Communications had requested it?

Molly had done her best to soothe him, imagining that a man like Brooker had taken it personally when his business’s creditworthiness had been questioned by her company’s business office. But despite that edge of ego, she had been able to calm Brooker down remarkably fast.

The supervisor from Garrett Electric had shown up and been effective with his technicians; all in all, it had not been a bad night’s work. As she pulled off the Orange Freeway and headed up the already busy streets toward home, Molly figured she could shower, sleep for a couple of hours and be back in the office by noon.

She turned off the soft-rock station and flipped to an all-news station. The first story was a frightening one about more turmoil in the Middle East, a car bomb and dead children. The second story was about the murder of ex-sportscaster and football player, Paul Buntz.

Molly stared at her radio as if she could see the story unfold, while the broadcaster filled in the details. Shot five times in a deserted parking lot near the Summer Point Marina, Buntz was found floating in the Pacific by an unidentified man at approximately 2:00 a.m.

A suspect was being sought by the police, the radio voice added. He was a wealthy Orange County businessman identified as Frederick Brooker, owner of Inscrutable Security in Summer Point. An eyewitness reported seeing Brooker speeding off in a beige Lincoln limo, in the direction of Mission Verde.