Читать книгу Finders Keepers - Shirl Henke - Страница 10

“What a great set of buns,” Samantha Ballanger said under her breath with a low whistle. It wasn’t professional, but then this wasn’t an ordinary job.

From the cover of her van door, she watched Matthew Granger bend over to pick up a beer can some litterbug had tossed on the sidewalk. He pitched it into a nearby trash can like a good citizen, then turned and continued walking down the opposite side of the street. He’d spot her in half a minute.

The photos didn’t lie. He was tall as a church steeple, six-six if he was an inch, and looked like a young Tom Selleck. Very appealing, but his size might present some logistical complications. Brushing that worry aside, she pulled the other door to her Econoline van wide open and slid an oversize box halfway out. Then she pretended to struggle loading it.

At five-four, the curly-headed brunette was, as her Irish-Catholic mother euphemistically put it, “well endowed.” That’s why she choose to wear a sprayed-on pair of hip-hugger shorts and a halter top that displayed her assets like an Excel spreadsheet. If this getup didn’t grab his attention, he had an eyesight problem her research hadn’t revealed.

As soon as he looked across the street, she could tell there was nothing wrong with his vision. Sam increased her exertion, even emitting a few ladylike swearwords to indicate she was in big trouble. A guy who cleaned up litter surely wouldn’t refuse to help a damsel in distress. She watched him vacillate, obviously wanting to help her as he glanced down at his wristwatch.

Chivalry won out just as she hoped it would. Granger crossed the deserted street. She knew this wasn’t the best neighborhood in San Diego for a woman alone, especially an attractive one whose least provocative article of apparel was the fanny pack strapped to her waist. The big brick complex of buildings where Granger lived was called Samaritan Haven, a place where people hid from their pasts, or ran from their futures. Not all of them were exactly hospitable to strangers.

“Need some help?” he asked, nodding to the box, half in, half out of the van.

“Yeah, I could use some. Thanks,” Sam replied with a bright grin, stepping back so he could take the box in both hands. Predictable as snow in Boston.

“What’ve you got in here, rocks?” he asked, bending his knees to put some muscle behind shoving the box across the carpeting of the van.

Sam moved in close behind him, giving him a whiff of her perfume, a faint musky rose scent. Just for added measure, she let her breasts brush against his shoulder to distract him further. When he shoved the box all the way inside, she shoved the barrel of her gun sharply into his right kidney.

He grunted in surprise as she said conversationally, “It’s exactly what it feels like, so don’t get cute.”

“You’re the one who’s cute, honey, or I wouldn’t have walked my stupid butt across the street to be mugged,” he replied.

“No mugging, honey, but this will be a prelude to a funeral if you don’t spread your legs and lean forward into the van. Put all your weight on your palms.”

“If you’re a kidnapper, I have to warn you there’s not enough in—”

“Just do it,” she snapped curtly, pressing the gun muzzle harder into his kidney to emphasize her point. He was too big to take any chances with.

“Ouch,” he muttered with an oath, leaning forward and spreading his long legs.

Sam tossed a small plastic nasal inhaler next to where his left hand pressed into the plush carpeting. “Squeeze a spray into each nostril, then snuff it up—good and hard,” she instructed.

When he hesitated, she cocked the snub nose. He picked up the bottle and squeezed. She could see that he was trying not to get much of the spray up his nose, but with this new drug, that shouldn’t matter. “Now inhale.” She used the gun to emphasize her point. He complied with a noisy snuffle.

“What is that stuff? My nose’s tingling,” he said, trying to turn around.

“Stand still,” she commanded him, jamming the snub nose harder in his kidney until she was satisfied that he wouldn’t try anything stupid. Then she grabbed the back of his shirt with her free hand and balled it up tightly between his shoulder blades.

“Hey, you’re choking me,” he protested.

She ignored him. No time to fool around now, she thought, eyeing the deserted street again. “Drop the bottle and put your hand back on the van floor.”

“Okay, you’re calling the shots.” He coughed as his shirt collar bit into the sides of his throat. “For a little broad, you have a grip like a sumo wrestler. Now what?”

“We wait,” she said. This was her first use of the new inhalator. Just her luck to experiment on a guy tall as a skyscraper. He coughed again. She imagined his brain starting to spin like the Seattle Space Needle.

His right arm buckled. He straightened it and shook his head. “Shit, that stuff wasn’t Vicks, was it?” he muttered thickly.

Sam heard the slight slurring in his voice and swore silently. Jules had told her the nasal delivery system worked fast, but with a guy this big she’d never imagined it could work quite this fast. Damn! He was starting to puddle up real quick. She found it distracting enough that the man was drop-dead gorgeous. But did he have to be twice her size to boot? If he oozed beneath the van she’d be screwed. There was no way she could heft over two hundred pounds of male muscle from the pavement into her vehicle.

When his legs suddenly started to give way, she hissed, “Lock your knees. Stiffen your legs, for God’s sake.” A little panic was not all that unprofessional.

“Stiffen…stiff… My ass.” The sibilant sound hissed between slack lips. “I cudn’ get stiff for Julia Roberts.”

Sam could see his legs were liquefying. She uncocked the .38 and slipped it into her fanny pack to have both hands free to work. She reached up between his legs to grab the front waistband of his Levi’s.

“Doan get fresh!” It came out “fesh.”

He grunted in acute discomfort as she levered her forearm up against his testicles. It was an old jujitsu move guaranteed to turn any man into a toe dancer. Any man not already higher than a satellite. His knees continued to wobble like Jell-O as she tried to shove him inside the van.

He muttered, “Hey, hey, tha’s m…m’ fam’ly jew’ls.”

“Either you help me get your ass in that van or I’m going to liquidate a couple of the family assets right now. Got it?” Braced behind him, Sam cupped her left hand under his knee, trying to get him to lift it onto the floor of the van. She revised her estimate of his weight. He was the size of her uncle Declan’s semi carrying a full load of sheet steel.

She tugged at his knee again, cursing as she became truly desperate. “Come on, throw your friggin’ leg up there!” A quick glance up and down the street revealed no spectators, her only break so far. Finally, using her body weight against his rump, she bumped him hard several times until she was able to lever his knee high enough to slide it onto the van floor and roll him inside.

“Guy’s ’posed ta do the h-humpin’,” he said, collapsing, giggling in baritone as he flopped onto his back.

Now she only had one of his long legs and an arm dangling out the doors. “I can do this,” she muttered to herself, leaning over him so she could pull the offending limbs inside.

“Ya got great k-knockers…ash, too,” he murmured as his hand groped clumsily around her hip.

Quickly she bent the leg and shoved it inside, then threw the offending arm across his chest and slammed the door before it flopped out again. Sam could hear the crack of his elbow hitting the door panel but he was clearly feeling no pain. The giggling continued, a side effect of the drug she hadn’t been warned about.

“Crap, ‘happy hour’ at ten in the morning,” she muttered to herself. Relief made her almost giddy enough to giggle in return while she once again scanned the street. Not so much as a window shade moved in any of the buildings. Southern California. It figured. “I could’ve gone after him with a net and trident and nobody would’ve noticed a thing.”

Sam climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition, then placed the .38 in the glove compartment before pulling out and driving away slowly. In the back of the Econoline she could hear soft male snoring as her new “retrieval” settled into a deep, drugged slumber.

“Well, handsome, we sure as hell gave added dimension to the term tailgating,” she said, turning the corner of the street and heading for a deserted strip mall next to the freeway.

Pulling into the back of the parking lot beneath a cluster of blue gum trees, she shifted to Park, keeping the engine running while she climbed over the seat and quickly changed into a loose set of pink hospital scrubs. After exchanging her slides for a pair of crepe-soled lace-up shoes, she climbed out of the side door of the Econoline and opened the back.

Changing Granger’s appearance took a bit more work but she’d had lots of practice. Still, her usual “snatches” weren’t built anything like this specimen. It took her twice the average time to get his big body trussed up in a lightweight straitjacket concealed by a large institutional-looking terry robe. The faintest hint of a raspy black beard gave him a piratical look. More eyelashes than Liz Taylor. She shook her head in aggravation and slipped a sleeping mask over those wonderful eyes, then taped his mouth shut.

By the time she’d swathed his head with gauze bandages, Sam felt her confidence return. She replaced his shoes with bedroom slippers, then used the custom seat-belt straps attached to the floor to secure him safely for the ride. The belt would also minimize any thrashing when he woke.

So far, so good, she thought as she climbed out of the van carrying two oblong magnetic plates. After locking the rear door, she attached the signs to the sides of the vehicle. They read Fairview Hospital and gave a bogus address about five hundred miles northeast of San Diego on Interstate 15. When they neared there, she had other sets for the cross-country trip to Boston.

“Sweet dreams, gorgeous.” Humming softly to herself, she pulled out of the deserted parking lot and hopped on the freeway. With any luck they’d make Utah by nightfall.

Funny, but he’d never gone blind with a hangover before. Matt blinked and tried to focus through the blackness, past the pounding inside his head. He’d been fading in and out of consciousness for an indeterminate length of time while someone was driving him someplace. He hadn’t the foggiest who or where. His head throbbed so wickedly he didn’t much give a damn. But then the vehicle came to an abrupt stop and he was forced into full and painful wakefulness.

Sam could see he was conscious if not exactly alert. She gave him an experimental shove. “Rise and shine, sweet cheeks.”

Matt wished to hell he could choke the life out of whoever it was and just fade back into blissful oblivion. Must’ve been one hell of a party. He couldn’t remember tying one on this badly since he was a freshman at Yale. The woman prodded him again. Shit, he was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey! What the hell was going on? No party, for sure. It started to come back to him when he heard that Boston accent again and smelled her rose perfume.

“Just sit up. You can do it,” Sam wheedled, tugging on the robe covering the straitjacket that held his arms immobilized.

If only his head would stop the trip-hammer pounding so he could think. Did she work for Renkov? He asked but only mumbles came out. When he tried to talk he sounded like Bruce Springsteen singing. Then he recognized the tight burning feeling over his mouth. The loony bitch had taped it shut! And blindfolded him. His senses were starting to coordinate now, feeding his aching brain enough information to let him know that he was in trouble.

Big trouble.

For all he knew she intended to dump him in San Diego Bay. Yeah, she had to be working for that mobster Renkov. But how the hell had the bastard found out he was here? Had he compromised his sources and placed Tess and her son in danger, too? Matt swore to himself, frustrated, unable to think of anything he could do to break free.

Sam could sense the wheels turning in her captive’s cunning mind. She knew he was going to make this difficult for her as she yanked his legs over the side of the van and pulled him into an upright position. He tried falling backwards into the van, but she applied pressure to a reflex point under his jawbone just in front of his ear that sent a nasty wave of pain shooting into his skull, which she was certain already pounded with agony from the nasal Mickey she’d given him. She’d studied martial arts since her early days with the Miami-Dade PD.

Matt wondered how long he had been out. Judging from the stiffness in his joints, he guessed hours. His bladder suddenly joined the circuit overload and informed him that he needed to take a serious whiz.

Sam knew he was achy and bruised, not to mention past due for using the bathroom. “You’d better cooperate and climb out of the van like a good boy or I’ll have to apply more persuasion. I know the drug’s worn off. If you want to be comfortable and get rid of the restraints, you have to cooperate. Then I’ll explain everything. Oh, and you can use the convenience, too,” she added as an afterthought.

Bitch. What choice did he have?

As if reading his mind, she continued, “Walk for me or I’ll leave you wrapped up in the van while I get a good night’s rest in the motel room.”

His bladder made the decision for him. He sat forward and gingerly slid from the van to the ground with her guiding him. Maybe she didn’t intend to kill him or turn him over to Renkov. Damn, but he’d never felt so helpless in his life, bound and gagged in pitch darkness. Not to mention the wretched drug hangover enhanced by her skillful application of torture to his jaw. He let her guide him across a sidewalk toward whatever fate she had in store for him.

Sam checked the parking lot of the Shady Acres Motel, a small sleazy place situated in a nothing burg in southern Utah. No one watched as she led her “patient” toward the door to the dingy room. The desk clerk had barely taken his eyes off a Wheel of Fortune rerun as he processed her credit card and handed her a room key. She was an R.N. transporting a burn patient to a special rehab facility in Salt Lake. Not half as interesting as Vanna White.

Desert heat seared them as they walked to the room. Sam could tell by his muffled curses that his feet burned through the thin soles of the slippers. He was uncomfortable but there was nothing she could do except hurry him inside. “Here, lean against the wall while I unlock the door,” she commanded.

A blessedly cool blast of air hit her, never mind that it was dank and reeked of old cigarettes. So much for a nonsmoking room. “Here, let me guide you to the bed,” she said to Granger, who shuffled along, forced to trust her.

He was the biggest man she’d ever dealt with and, frankly, he made her nervous for more than one reason. The skinny teenagers with shaven heads and body piercings she usually picked up were a piece of cake, mostly because they were usually too high on narcotics or theology to give her much trouble. Even if they tried, hey, there was a reason for those nose rings farmers put on bulls.

But Matt Granger was another story altogether. He was tall, lean and muscular. Not a thing had been folded, spindled or mutilated on this bod. She’d bet he went two-twenty and all of it was solid muscle. Her old partner Will “Pat” Patowski had asked her to put this guy on ice, but he never warned her she’d have to watch her libido while she worked. She’d deliver Granger safely to Boston or Pat would have her hide. Besides, the fee was too good to screw this up.

She removed the stun gun from her fanny pack and placed it on the bed opposite Matt’s. Then she began unwinding the wrapping from his head, followed by the blindfold. He blinked several times and she noticed that his eyes were a gorgeous shade of golden brown. Kinda went with the black curly hair and darkly tanned skin.

Get over it, Ballanger. This is business. “Okay, here’s the deal,” she said without further preamble. The tape on his mouth would come off after she’d finished her spiel. Then he could argue. The head cases always did. She was sure this guy would be considerably more convincing. “Your aunt Claudia Witherspoon hired me to retrieve you from the cult you joined in San Diego. Here’s my card.”

He blinked, trying to get his eyes accustomed to the light in the scrofulous motel room which contained two saggy beds. They were seated on them facing each other. He was still trussed up and couldn’t talk. Might as well read the damn card she was shoving in his face. It said Samantha Ballanger, Retrieval Specialist. How the hell had this dame hooked up with his aunt Claudia? She sounded south Boston while his aunt was a Brahmin from old and serious money. He didn’t like the way this whole mess smelled. Then she started talking again, so he paid attention.

“I’m taking you back to your aunt. She’s really concerned about your living in a Southern California commune and has the best psychiatric specialists waiting to treat you once you’re safely home. As you can see—” she gestured to the bundle of gauze lying on the bed beside him, then pointed to the robe and slippers she’d dressed him in “—you’re a burn patient and I’m your nurse. I’m transporting you to a rehab facility. At least, that’s what anyone I tell will believe.

“One way or the other, we’re driving straight through to Boston. I can get you there the easy way or the hard way. It’s all up to you. I’ll make you as comfortable as possible, but if you try any funny stuff, I’ll have to use this.” She picked up the stun gun from the bed and held it to his thigh. “Sorry about this, but I’ve found that one quick object lesson is worth a thousand warnings.”

With that she gave the tiniest flick of the trigger mechanism and an incredibly sharp burst of what seemed like living flame shot up and down his leg. He nearly tore the tape loose cursing as she calmly replaced the weapon on the bed beside her.

“Like I said, sorry. But understand, that little jolt was only a love tap. If you try to jump me, I’ll give you a shot that’ll make you think you French-kissed a wall socket.”

This broad’s the one who needs “the best psychiatric specialists” in Boston! He glared at her.

Sam met his eyes. Had he bought her story? He knew he wasn’t a head case living in a commune, but would he believe that she thought so? It would sure make it easier if he did. “Okay, now let me help you out of the jacket and make you comfortable. Then you can talk.”

When he looked down at the nylon wrapping holding his arms immobilized across his chest, she said, “Yeah, it’s a straitjacket. Custom made for me by an outfit in St. Louis called Leather and Lace. Scoot over to the end of the bed but stay sitting,” she instructed, slipping that vicious stun gun into her waistband.

He complied, desperate to get the damn tape off so he could ask if she ever planned to let him use the bathroom. Or, maybe the whole shtick was a ruse and she just intended to talk until his bladder exploded. But, she moved behind him and pulled the robe from his shoulders with one hand, then unfastened the straps of the straitjacket.

One of Matt’s first assignments at the Miami Herald had been to write an exposé on abuses in a Florida mental facility. As he shrugged off the restraint, he knew regular hospital jackets weighed a hell of a lot more than this lightweight job. Leather and Lace. An uneasy thought crossed his mind. He just knew she was into serious S & M when she dangled a pair of handcuffs over his shoulder. When she yanked the tape from his mouth, his lips burned like they’d been basted in jalapeño juice. “Son of a bitch!”

“Click the cuff on your right wrist,” Sam said, stepping back and moving around to face him again. He was big and angry and his eyes burned into her like lasers. She felt more uncomfortable than she had on her first snatch—hell, even on her first arrest as a rookie cop.

“You must be that S & M outfit’s best customer. Get a volume discount?” he asked, waiting to see what she’d do. Maybe this would be his chance. Then again, maybe not. He eyed the stun gun held unwaveringly in her hand.

“I imagine you need to use the facilities,” she said dryly, enticing his cooperation by nodding to the open door of a mold-encrusted bathroom.

His bladder did a couple of push-ups to remind him of how right-on that was. “Yes, I do,” he said grudgingly, clicking the cuff on his wrist.

“Get up slowly and walk inside, sit on the stool and attach the other cuff around the pipe beneath the bathroom sink.”

If he hadn’t had to go damn bad, he wouldn’t have been so cooperative. But he did so he was. She stood in the doorway, watching intently. When he had cuffed himself to the pipe, she continued to check out the small room until he felt on the verge of gargling. “You gonna stand there and watch?”

Sam finished her inspection of the facilities and regarded the irate man seated on the commode. He really thinks I’m some sort of sex pervert. The idea amused her. She couldn’t suppress a grin. “Water sports aren’t among my favorites, Mr. Granger.” She started to close the door.

“Turn on the television,” he said.

“Why should I?”

He hesitated. “I don’t want you listening.”

She stared curiously at him. What now? His face was the color of Spanish roof tile. “Listening for what?”

“Bathroom…noises,” he muttered.

She couldn’t stop the sudden burst of laugher. Bathroom noises. Jeez!

Matt became enraged. “You damned pervert! Straitjackets! Handcuffs! Now bathroom bondage.”

She held up her hands. The guy was serious. Sam didn’t mean to humiliate him any more than essential for security. “All right, all right, I’ll turn on the TV.” She shut the door with good intentions, but then was unable to believe she was saying, “I could play one of my CDs instead—the Chamber Pot Concerto in PP Minor.” She could hear him curse as she turned on the television, then flopped onto the bed and muffled her laughter with a pillow.

In the bathroom Matt thanked God for small favors. At least she wasn’t a nutcase looking for some cheap motel thrills. As he attended to the pressing business at hand—awkward as hell for a guy forced to do it sitting down—he considered his situation. Was she on the level with this “retrieval” stuff? Could he convince her that she had the wrong guy?

When she opened the bathroom door a quarter hour later, a pizza carton and two cans of Coke were sitting on the chipped particleboard table by the window. “Double cheese, pepperoni. Okay with you?” she asked, tossing the key to him so he could unlock the cuff from the drainpipe.

Matt sniffed the heavenly aroma of greasy spice and his stomach gave a growl of gratitude. “I’m happy starving your prisoners into submission isn’t your M.O.”

“You’re aren’t my prisoner, Mr. Granger. Now toss me back the key and take a seat.”

He eyed the stun gun and held up the dangling handcuff. “Coulda fooled me.” He sat on a rickety orange plastic chair and reached for a slice of gooey pizza.

“Eh, eh, eh,” she scolded. “First click the cuff to your chair leg.”

Scowling, he obeyed, then used his left hand to dig into the food. “Sure, I forgot. The handcuffs will keep me from falling off my chair and hurting myself. I’m a patient, not a prisoner. Say, can we talk about that?” he asked around a mouthful of pepperoni.

“You talk. I’m gonna eat,” she replied, devouring the first food she’d had in well over twelve hours.

“You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m a reporter for the Miami Herald. I came to San Diego to research a human interest story. About women hiding from abusive husbands, mothers hiding their kids from fathers trying to kidnap them. That sort of thing. I haven’t joined a commune.” He wasn’t about to mention Renkov and the Russian mob, the real story he was working on.

“That’s not the picture your aunt Claudia gave me.”

“Look, my aunt has a photographic memory—but no film. She’s the one who needs a shrink, not me.”

“I’ll let the two of you work that out with your doctors.”

“Call the Herald news desk and ask for—”

“Thought you said you were doing a human interest piece. The story you described is a feature, not news,” she said, wiping her mouth.

“You have a dual major in jujitsu and journalism?” he asked, sinking his teeth into a slab of pizza and imagining it was Aunt Claudia’s jugular.

She ignored his outburst. “Look, I’ve heard it all before. Everyone has a reason why I should let them go. Some of them are pretty good.”

He took a deep breath, then said in his most intimidating tone, “I could sue the socks off you once we get to Boston. Even press criminal charges for kidnapping.”

Sam remained undaunted. She tossed the paper napkin into the pizza carton, then walked over to her bag and removed a sheath of papers. “Believe me, I checked out your aunt’s story and background quite thoroughly before I took the job. I always do. Read these.” She handed him the papers.

Matt quickly skimmed down the pages, then crumpled them in outrage. “She swore out a bench warrant on me for stealing Uncle Harvey’s engraved Rolex!”

Sam just looked at the expensive gold watch on his wrist, saying nothing.

“For your information, my great-uncle gave me this watch personally while his sister Claudia stood there beaming. It was a college graduation present, for chrissakes!”

“Something else to settle with your aunt when we get back to Boston. She claims it’s a family heirloom and you had no right to take it.”

“This is false arrest. I’ll sue you! Hell, I’ll still sue her!”

“Lots of my retrievals threaten to sue me or have me arrested for kidnapping. Cult members—”

“Samaritan Haven is not a cult,” he said through gritted teeth. “It isn’t even a commune—at least, not the sort you yank brainwashed kids from. It’s really more of a hiding place where people drop out of sight.” Matt leaned forward on the table and combed his fingers through his hair in utter frustration. “I only moved into the place to check out a lead.”

He hesitated. How much should he reveal? He couldn’t endanger his source. That might get her and a number of other innocent people killed. Then again, if Samantha Ballanger had been hired by the Russian Mafia, she already knew that her targets were hiding in the complex. Finding them wouldn’t be difficult. He reconsidered. No, if that were true, he’d already be dead. He decided to take a risk.

“You ever heard of Mikhail Renkov?”

Sam nodded carefully. “The KGB guy who defected to the West in the last days of the Cold War? A big feather in the CIA’s hat, as I recall. Now he’s some sort of import-export millionaire, isn’t he?” Play dumb, Ballanger.

He nodded approvingly. “You read the newspapers. What they haven’t said, yet, is that he hasn’t exactly broken all his ties to Mother Russia. He’s up to his eyeballs in all sorts of illegal stuff—playing footsie with the Russian mob, even dealing with Colombian drug cartels—and I bet he has some pals inside the Company or even in State who’re turning a blind eye.”

“Hang on, Mel,” she interrupted, putting a hand up in dismissal. “Conspiracy Theory was a great movie—”

“And the nutcase Gibson played was right in the end, wasn’t he? Just let me finish. Remember reading about Renkov’s son buying the farm last month?”

“Alexi, the golf pro? Yeah, he was killed in a car bombing. Cops suspect the wife did it—to keep him from divorcing her and running off with his starlet bimbo of the month. Mrs. Renkov dropped out of sight and they’re looking for her.”

“Yeah, the car bomb was her final project to get her electrical engineering degree. Come on, a woman car-bomber? Tess Renkov didn’t kill her husband.”

Sam shrugged. In her checkered career she’d been a cop, paramedic and even moonlighted running down bail jumpers. What he said about the Renkov case could be true. All Pat had told her was that Granger was getting too close to a joint PD-FBI investigation of Mikhail Renkov and they wanted the reporter out of their hair.

“Look, if a bad actor like old Mikhail thought you’d killed his only son, would you stick around and chat?” he argued doggedly. “I think his golden boy was killed by daddy’s enemies. What we have here is a turf war with billions in Eastern Bloc cash at stake.”

“Don’t forget the drug cartels. They have lots of dough, too. But they’re not paying me. Aunt Claudia is. Maybe you can convince her about all this—after I collect my fee.” She shoved the key to the cuffs across the table so he could free his right arm from the chair.

“A one-track mind,” he said with a sigh of resignation. Convincing this dame was as likely as riding a zebra.

Sam watched him unlock the cuff, then took back the key and motioned him to sit on the bed. She knew he was getting tired of taking orders, but he was too sharp to try and jump her—at least just yet. He did as she asked resentfully, then watched as she smoothed out the legal papers he’d crumpled and replaced them in the bag she’d brought from the van.

Stubborn as a stump in hard clay but one fine-looking woman, he thought. Under different circumstances… Forget it, Granger. Remember how that stun gun smarts. Then again, if he could soften her up…so to speak. What the hell, worth a try. It wasn’t as if she was a dog or anything close. In fact, she was a looker. He’d only be doing what came naturally. And so would she, if her earlier reactions to him had meant anything. Usually he read women pretty well.

Sam approached him, holding a set of pajamas she’d taken from the bag. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his mind as she said, “Strip and put these on.”

He cocked his head and grinned, tsking. “With you watching, Ms. Ballanger? You adding voyeurism to bondage?”

“I’m a trained medical professional,” she said coolly. A little bit too coolly. Her indifference to the visions of Matt Granger’s naked body was pure bravado. Sam tightened her grip on the weapon as she tossed the pj’s at him. She was finding that pimply kids spaced out on cosmic visions were a lot easier to handle than one smart-mouthed newsman with a body to die for.

He caught the pajamas deftly, then extended the upper garment back to her. “I’ve always been a bottoms guy myself. Want the top?”

She could feel his eyes on her suddenly hardened nipples as surely as if he had X-ray vision. “No thanks. Never liked The Pajama Game. Just put on both pieces,” she said with satisfaction when readily visible evidence of his reaction started to grow in his jeans.

“Well, what the hell, Ms. Medical Professional, you like ‘The Bondage Game’ well enough. And apparently the Chippendales.”

He gave her another of those infuriating grins and kicked off the slippers, then pulled his shirt over his head…very slowly. She could see every muscle flexing. Tossing it carelessly to the floor between the beds, he started to remove his jeans. She was pleased when he paid careful attention to unzipping his fly. It must have been uncomfortable as hell, she thought smugly, but when he dropped the jeans to his ankles and kicked them away, her mouth was dry. Other places on her body weren’t.

According to her cover story, his attic floorboards were supposed to be warped, but all the timbers below were in great shape. Bloody Architectural Digest quality, dammit! The most interesting one at the moment was the structural beam jutting straight out as he met her eyes and dared her.

“Gonna zap me?” he whispered.

She pointed the stun gun at the strategic place and replied, “If I do, we’ll have a wiener roast, so don’t tempt me.” More like a kielbasa roast. “Just be a good boy and put on the pajamas,” she managed to say with a level voice. He turned around and reached casually for the pj’s, giving her a full view of that great set of buns. Fits with the sausage.

Looking over his shoulder as he slipped the bottoms on, he said, “Didn’t mean to moon you, but I imagine a trained medical professional’s seen it all, hasn’t she?”

“Pretty much.” She managed to leash her libido by reminding herself about the cool ten K plus expenses she’d collect from dear old Aunt Claudia. Right now that road was looking really long, hard and rocky. Don’t think long. Don’t think hard. Don’t think rocks, dammit!

“Good night, Mr. Moonie.” She motioned for him to lie down on the bed.

He stretched out and then folded his hands as if to pray with the open cuff still dangling from his right wrist. “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray—”

“You’ll have to do your nightly devotions hands unfolded. Reach down and click the cuff to the bed frame.” She pointed at the exposed steel bar beneath the box spring.

“I work much better with both hands free, darlin’,” he said, grinning again as he patted the mattress.

“You’ll only need one hand free to do what you need to do tonight.” Sam couldn’t help the snide tone any more than she could keep her eyes away from the tent pole under the sheet.

Muttering about feminine perversity, he clicked the cuff to the bed frame and closed his eyes. Sam flipped off the lights, undressed and slipped into her own bed. After a few moments, she heard him whisper.

“You know, a few times today, I thought I heard Cole Porter tunes.”

She rolled on her side and stared across the darkness separating them. “I was playing an Ella Fitzgerald CD of Cole Porter’s hits. I like his music.” The minute she replied, she could’ve kicked herself. Not smart to get involved, especially in a snatch as unorthodox as this one.

“Me, too. My favorite’s ‘Night and Day.’”

Too late now. She replied, “Hmm. I’d never have taken you for a romantic. Mine’s ‘Love for Sale.’” His soft chuckle caught her by surprise.

“Certainly it is.”

Damn the man. So she was mercenary. So what? A girl from South Boston didn’t have all that many options, unless she considered driving over the road with Uncle Declan. But Sam would be damned if she explained herself to a preppy-turned-reporter like Matt Granger. In a few minutes she could hear the sound of soft male snoring blending with the wheeze of the air conditioner.

She lay in her bed staring at the ceiling, wide-awake.