Читать книгу Tall, Dark And Wanted - Morgan Hayes - Страница 11

Molly gripped the wheel of her Jeep Wrangler a little tighter and eased her foot off the gas as she maneuvered the vehicle into a sweeping curve. The headlights skimmed across the high snowbanks, hinting at the dark trunks and dense underbrush beyond. Normally she’d enjoy a drive like this—twisting blacktop through the middle of the wilderness. But with the snow coming down even thicker now, and with the wind battering against the side of the Wrangler, the fun was lost to the struggle against the elements.

Not to mention the fact that she was exhausted. For almost ten hours straight she’d battled the slippery conditions of Highway 131, then traffic along the I-75 heading north through Michigan; she’d spent another three past the Canadian border, fighting whiteouts and snow-covered roads the entire way. The thrill of the drive was long gone, replaced with anxiousness as Molly glanced down at her gas gauge.

“Bass Lake, eh? Oh yeah, that’s just up the road a few kilometers,” the proprietor of the last convenience store had advised, and he’d proceeded to give her directions that had convinced her she’d make it there on the quarter tank of gas.

But “a few kilometers” had translated to miles. And those miles had been added to when she’d missed the snow-plastered sign and the turnoff, and ended up driving a good twenty minutes beyond before realizing the mistake and having to backtrack.

The needle of the gas gauge dipped even farther below the E as she banked the Jeep through the next curve. Molly cursed. Why hadn’t she heeded that voice of warning in her head when she’d considered stopping a couple of hours ago to scout for a motel?

Because her gut had told her not to. Her gut told her Mitch was alive, and that she had to get to him before Sabatini did. Her gut had led her to Mitch’s closed-up architecture firm in the Jackson Boulevard Complex, where she’d rifled through his files and Rolodex, and found Barb Newcombe’s name and the address of her summer place in Ontario. And Molly’s gut had told her that of all the possibilities, it was his college friend’s cottage Mitch would most likely run to.

Of course, it wasn’t her gut that was running on empty and was about to die along this deserted stretch of godforsaken, freezing road, Molly thought, cursing again.

She’d called Barb Newcombe’s secretary yesterday afternoon in Chicago, and managed to find out that the CEO had taken an extended New Year’s vacation in Canada and wasn’t expected back to work until the day after tomorrow. The chance of Mitch being at Newcombe’s cottage with her had seemed even more likely after that, and Molly had started packing.

She’d almost finished by early evening when Adam had shown up at the door of her apartment. He hadn’t waited for an invite, but pushed his way in, demanding to know what she was up to and why she hadn’t responded to any of his attempts to page her.

“Yeah, right, Molly,” he’d said, standing in the doorway of her bedroom as he’d watched her shove more clothes into her overnight bag. “You aren’t visiting your aunt in Cleveland. Unless, of course, you always pack your off-duty for family reunions.” He lifted one fleece sweater to reveal the compact Walther 380 tucked in its ankle holster. “Hell, you probably don’t even have an aunt in Cleveland, do you?”

Molly ignored the question, praying he wouldn’t search further and find her on-duty weapon in the bag as well.

“Adam, would you do me a favor?”

“Nope.”

“Adam, come on, it’s just—”

“No way.” He shook his head, and Molly followed him into the cramped living room, where he attempted to pace.

She’d always thought Adam Barclay was built like a linebacker for the Bears, and in her small apartment, he looked even broader as he tried to maneuver around the clutter.

“You’ve got a key to my place,” she continued, adopting a plea in her voice. “Just come in and feed Cat once a day? Please?”

“That ungrateful bag of—”

“Please?”

“Only if you tell me where you’re really headed.”

“I can’t do that, Adam.”

“You’re going after him, aren’t you?”

The question shouldn’t have surprised her. After all, practically everyone in the Homicide Unit—especially her partner—knew of the deep-seated grudge she held against Sabatini. How could Adam not have guessed what she was up to?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stated.

“The architect. Mitch Drake. You figure he survived the bombing, that he’s alive and hiding out someplace. So you’re going to single-handedly bring him in. The unwilling witness.”

“And how do you arrive at that conclusion?”

“Come on, Molly, I’ve been your partner three years, and in all that time you’ve never taken a vacation. I think I can figure it out. So…what d’you think you’ll get for this stunt—bringing in the one witness that can finally put Sabatini behind bars? Assuming you can pull it off, that is. You aiming for another bronze star?”

The rancor in Adam’s voice had confused her. “Why are you so bothered at the thought of me taking a little vacation time to follow a personal hunch?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” His voice had sharpened. “Maybe because I don’t want to lose my partner?”

She’d thought she saw a glimmer of concern sweep across Adam’s face then.

“Come on, Molly.” He softened his tone, as though still hoping to convince her. “This is insane. Sabatini isn’t your crusade, and you’re not some one-woman crime squad, as much as you’ve been trying to act like it ever since Sutton’s murder. Even if this Drake guy is alive, it’s suicide to think you can bring him in on your own, against Sabatini’s men. And I’m tellin’ you, if Sabatini hasn’t already had the guy executed, you can bet he’s got every hired thug of his out there lookin’ for him. Leave it to Witness Protection or the Fugitive Squad or whoever it is they’ve got searching for Drake.”

“I’m just going to take a few days and see what I can come up with, Adam. That’s all.”

“You’re just going to take a few days and get yourself killed, is all. Just like Sutton, for God’s sake. Guess you learned more from your former partner than I gave you credit for, huh?”

“Look, Adam, I appreciate your concern. Really, I do. But I have to do this. I have to try. Mitch…he…if he is alive, he’s running scared. He’s not going to trust anyone now.”

“And what makes you think he’ll trust you?”

“Because…because he and I have a past,” she admitted before she could change her mind about sharing the personal tidbit.

Her gaze had involuntarily flitted to her fireplace. It was so brief, but Adam caught it. He looked to the framed photo of her and Mitch, barely out of high school, in one another’s arms. She didn’t know why she kept it there on her mantel, but anytime she tried to put the photo away she wasn’t able to.

“Adam, I have to at least try. If anyone is going to be able to find Mitch and convince him to testify…it’s me.”

But now, as Molly strained to see the next road sign through the mounting snow squalls in her headlights, she was beginning to doubt what she’d told Adam. And as she slowed to make the turn toward Bass Lake and felt the first sputter of the Jeep as it accelerated on what could only be fumes at this point, Molly silently prayed that her past with Mitch would have some power in convincing him to return to Chicago and do the right thing.

It wasn’t just to see Sergio Sabatini behind bars, Molly realized as she spotted the distant glimmer of lights beyond the thumping wipers. Mitch’s life depended on it.

BARB’S WORDS HAD PLAGUED Mitch all day. He’d shoveled snow, split some firewood, even changed the oil in the Blazer. And all the while he’d weighed the wisdom of doing as Barb suggested and going to the police.

Still, he’d not been able to see any reason for doing so. Returning to Chicago to testify against Sabatini would have no affect on his own life, anyway. It would do nothing to change the fact that Emily was dead and his career was over. The only reason left for testifying now was to ensure Sabatini didn’t kill any more innocent people. But how was it that he owed anyone anything?

Bitterness had consumed him several times throughout the day. It would clutch at his heart and start the small, familiar fits of anger he’d felt far too often over the past ten months. What did he owe anybody, after what he’d been through, after everything he’d lost?

By early evening, after spending an hour wandering through the house, reacquainting himself with his past design, he’d finally settled down by the fireplace. He’d picked up a pad of paper and a pencil and started sketching possible plans for the addition Barb had mentioned. What else did he have to do except bide his time? Wait for Sabatini’s men to find him…

The sketching, however, had done little to take his mind off his situation. In fact, it only served to remind him of the work and the life he no longer had back in Chicago.

Mitch lowered the pad and pencil at last. He checked his watch: almost 11:00 p.m. The living room lay in shadows, the only light coming from the fireplace and the lamp next to the wing chair he’d occupied for the past several hours. The classical CD on the stereo had finished long ago, and the entire house seemed to have been swallowed by the silence of the surrounding wilderness.

He might not have heard the neighbor’s German shepherd otherwise. But there was no mistaking the anxious bark from the next lot. Mitch set his sketches on the coffee table and moved across the dimly lit room. He approached the east window with caution and fingered open one of the shutters to peer into the darkness.

It was the thin beam of a flashlight through the thick, swirling snow that caught Mitch’s eye first. With such low cloud cover, the night was black, but he could just make out the silhouette of the figure behind the flashlight. It was impossible to tell if it was a man or woman who struggled through the mounting snow, but there was no mistaking the person’s seemingly determined route—straight down the drive toward the front door.

Maybe it was paranoia, but the name Sergio Sabatini jumped to the front of his mind. It was too late at night for lost or stranded tourists, and even if it was just some hapless soul, Barb’s was certainly not the first—and definitely not the most obvious—house along the lakeshore road.

It was that thought and a renewed sense of self-preservation that spurred Mitch away from the window and into action.

MOLLY COULDN’T PUT a finger on the bad feeling that had started in the pit of her stomach from the moment she’d seen Barb Newcombe’s name on the mailbox, but the feeling had risen steadily with each step she took toward the virtually unlit house. A dim but warm light slipped through the shuttered windows of a single downstairs room, flickering through the driving snow. The only other light came from the front porch.

As she mounted the steps, Molly switched off her flash-light and shoved it into a pocket of her anorak. She brushed herself off, removing one glove and wiping at the melted snow on her face while she stared at the set of double front doors.

The bad feeling moved up from her stomach and clutched at her lungs. She took a deep breath to try to calm it.

It wasn’t like the feeling she would sometimes get while working a case, moments before something went very wrong. And it was different from the kind that had saved her skin on more than a couple of occasions in the line of duty. But it was definitely a “feeling.”

Maybe she was tired.

Then again, maybe she was just worried, Molly rationalized. Worried about the kind of reception she might receive from Mitch after all these years.

She lifted a hand to one door and knocked solidly.

She waited.

Nothing happened.

Again she knocked. And again, nothing. The cold, black silence of the night, so different from the bright lights of Chicago, only added to her sense of unease as she reached for the door’s brass handle.

And that unease intensified when the latch moved freely and the door swung open. Maybe it was one of those gut feelings she was having, Molly thought as she took the first tentative step into the house and lowered her knapsack to the floor. Something definitely felt wrong.

What if Sabatini had gotten to Mitch first? The thought sent a hot prickle of fear along her skin. Lifting the bottom edge of her anorak, she unclipped the holster at her hip and removed her duty weapon. The Glock’s grip was cold, and her fingers shivered along the icy nickel as she drew back the slide.

She refused the urge to call out Mitch’s name. If Sabatini’s men had already found the house, there was the chance they were still on the premises. She certainly couldn’t afford to announce herself, she thought, taking another step into the dimly lit foyer and nudging the door closed behind her.

Vaguely, she was aware of the interior, the predominance of pine, the spaciousness of what had initially appeared to be a small house, and the tasteful, expensive decor including huge plants that thrived in the abundance of natural light that undoubtedly flooded through the floor-to-ceiling windows and the several skylights overhead during the day. The curved staircase reached up toward a darkened second floor, and to her right was the living room.

A warm glow flickered across the hardwood floors from the blazing fireplace. The only other light was a reading lamp beside an empty chair. As Molly moved cautiously through the room, she spotted the sketches on the coffee table. Architectural sketches.

Mitch was here. Or, at least, he had been.

Molly tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear and looked to the hearth. If Sabatini’s men had found Mitch, it had been very recently. She’d not seen any headlights in her long walk from where the Jeep had finally run out of gas, and the fire had been recently stoked. So maybe they were still here.

Like a sixth sense, the bad feeling gripped her again. It shivered its warning along her spine and caused the fine hairs at the back of her neck to bristle. Tightening her grip around her weapon, she started down the shadow-filled hallway to what she guessed was the kitchen.

But Molly didn’t get far. Barely two steps through the arched doorway, a blinding pain stopped her in her tracks—a pain that seared along the base of her skull and pitched her to her knees. For one wavering moment, Molly was aware of the floor’s ceramic tile, cool against her cheek. And in the next, blackness swallowed her.

ALL OF A SUDDEN the chunk of firewood in his hands seemed unbearably heavy—heavier than it had before he’d swung it high and felt its reverberating, almost sickening contact with the woman’s skull. With a small twinge of guilt, Mitch set the makeshift weapon down next to the body sprawled across the kitchen floor. He hadn’t thought it would be that easy when he’d taken up the piece of firewood and slipped into the kitchen before the first knock at the door.

His grip had tightened around the wood as he’d listened to her move through the front hall, then the living room. And when she’d rounded the corner to the kitchen, stepped through the doorway past his hiding spot, and he’d seen the light from the living room glint along the metal of the gun she held in her hand, he’d needed no more incentive. Mitch had swung.

Maybe he’d brandished the log a little too hard, though, he mused now as he turned on the kitchen lights and knelt beside her unmoving body. Thankfully there was no blood, but what if he’d broken her neck?

Part of him knew he shouldn’t care; after all, she’d come here to kill him. If he hadn’t attacked her first, she would have turned that gun on him. Still, she was a woman, and he had just struck her with a blow beyond anything he’d considered himself capable of inflicting on another human being.

Mitch slipped his hand beneath the collar of the woman’s anorak to the soft skin along her throat. Relief swept through him. There was a pulse.

In the harsh glare of the kitchen’s overhead fluorescents, Mitch was surprised at her small stature. When he’d seen her shadowed figure come through the arched doorway, her back to him, she’d looked bigger somehow. Or maybe it was the gun that had made her appear more formidable. But now, with her face turned away and her arm splayed out across the tiles as though she were reaching for him, she looked almost fragile.

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, Mitch reached for her. He grasped her shoulders in his hands and slowly eased her limp body over.

He wasn’t certain what came out of his mouth first: a curse or her name. But as he stared into her face, disbelief washing over him, there was no stopping the string of expletives that escaped his lips.

Her complexion seemed pale—almost frighteningly so—and Mitch felt for her pulse again.

“Come on, Molly. Snap out of it.” His voice filled the silence of the house, panic causing it to waver. “Molly, come on. I know you’re tough. Don’t do this to me. You’re going to be all right. Come on, honey.”

But there wasn’t so much as a moan or a twitch. She was out cold.

He should take her to the hospital, Mitch reasoned. But how could he? Even if anonymity wasn’t a crucial factor in his life right now, the closest ER had to be a good hour away at least, and that didn’t take into account the storm.

God, if he’d only known it was her. What was she doing here? How had she found him? Why hadn’t she called out for him? What had possessed her to just walk in with her gun drawn? And then Mitch was cursing her all over again as he unzipped her jacket. He checked her pulse a third time.

Beneath the dark green fleece lining, she wore a form-fitting thermal top tucked into her jeans. It puckered around the leather strap of her gun’s empty holster, drawing suggestively over the gentle swell of her breasts and her delicate rib cage. Mitch watched the fabric pull slightly as she took another shallow breath.

Twelve years…They’d certainly been good ones to Molly, he thought, staring into her face. The rounder lines that had been there in her youth had been replaced with more angular, mature features that accentuated the extraordinary bone structure beneath. Mitch was reminded of all the photos he’d seen of Molly’s mother. And when he looked at the seductive curve of Molly’s slightly parted lips, full and still moist, it was as though the years hadn’t passed, as though it was only yesterday that he’d tasted that tantalizing mouth.

Reaching out to brush back a stray wisp of dark hair, he touched her cheek. So soft. Like silk. He could still remember the feel of her skin…its softness against his, the supple curves of her body molding into his, the eager heat of her passion melding with his until he’d hardly known where his longing had begun and hers ended….

“Come on, Molly,” he murmured again, trying like hell to push the torrid memories back. “If you can hear me, you’ve gotta snap out of this. You’re scaring me, honey. Do you hear me? Molly?”

He leaned even closer to her, not sure what to do next, but knowing that he had to get her off the cold, hard kitchen floor. And that was when he smelled her—subtle traces of jasmine mingling with that intoxicating scent that was undeniably and forever Molly. The years melted away…they were in her father’s house, in Molly’s bedroom. She’d lit candles, while old Elton John tunes played on her stereo. She’d been bolder that night than she’d ever been, knowing her father was working midnight shift at the precinct. In twelve years, Mitch had never forgotten the tantalizing smile that had played on her lips when she’d shed the short, silk kimono, letting it fall to the floor as she stood naked before him, her skin glowing in the candlelight, her dark hair tumbling over her tanned shoulders and the shadows playing along each seductive curve, while he lay on her bed…waiting.

It was the last time they’d made love, one week before fall semester started, the night before he’d had to return to Boston. The last time he’d ever seen Molly…

“Molly, please…” he begged her again, but this time he slid his arms beneath her and gently lifted her delicate body from the floor. “Please, honey…”

God, she had to be all right, Mitch prayed. She had to be.