Mask Of A Hunter
Sylvie Kurtz
THE MAN BEHIND THE MASKHaunted by the demons of his past, hardened Seeker "Ace" Esteleone was the man least likely to mix business with pleasure. But the reckless behavior of the book-smart beauty he'd sworn to protect was threatening to ruin his investigation, and pretending to be her lover was the only way to keep them both safe.Desperate to find her missing sister, Aurora Cates hadn't counted on being dragged into the arms of the dark, unpredictable hunter. The passionate kisses meant for show soon shook them to the core–and led Ace to tell her his deepest secret. But when his cover was blown, Aurora was put right in the line of fire….
Kissing Aurora was a really bad idea
Ace couldn’t believe how easily she’d worked her way into his senses, dulling his survival instincts. Not good for the health of either of of them. He didn’t want to get involved with anyone—not in his line of work. Certainly not with the woman he was supposed to protect from harm.
It was bad enough his secret responsibility toward his own sister made him vulnerable. Falling for Rory would not only make doing his job more difficult—it could make her a target if things went sour. He couldn’t allow her to interfere with completing his task.
Still, he could not shake the sight of her sadness-darkened eyes, the feel of her fiery response to his kiss.
But he wasn’t going there. Couldn’t afford to.
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
We have another month of spine-tingling romantic thrillers lined up for you—starting with the much anticipated second book in Joanna Wayne’s tantalizing miniseries duo, HIDDEN PASSIONS: FULL MOON MADNESS. In Just Before Dawn, a reclusive mountain man vows to get to the bottom of a single mother’s terrifying nightmares before darkness closes in.
Award-winning author Leigh Riker makes an exciting debut in the Harlequin Intrigue line this May with Double Take. Next, pulses race out of control in Mask of a Hunter by Sylvie Kurtz—the second installment in THE SEEKERS—when a tough operative’s cover story as doting lover to a pretty librarian threatens to blow up.
Be there from the beginning of our brand-new in-line continuity, SHOTGUN SALLYS! In this exciting trilogy, three young women friends uncover a scandal in the town of Mustang Valley, Texas, that puts their lives—and the lives of the men they love—on the line. Don’t miss Out for Justice by Susan Kearney.
To wrap up a month of can’t-miss romantic suspense, Doreen Roberts debuts in the Harlequin Intrigue line with Official Duty, the next title in our COWBOY COPS thematic promotion. It’s a double-murder investigation that forces a woman out of hiding to face her perilous past…and her pent-up feelings for the sexy sheriff who still has her heart in custody. Last but certainly not least, Emergency Contact by Susan Peterson—part of our DEAD BOLT promotion—is an edgy psychological thriller about a traumatized amnesiac who may have been brainwashed to do the unthinkable….
Enjoy all our selections this month!
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Senior Editor,
Harlequin Intrigue
Mask of a Hunter
Sylvie Kurtz
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Chuck—as always
And for Lorrie, Lynne and Wendy—
friendship grows in the strangest places.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Flying an eight-hour solo cross-country in a Piper Arrow with only the airplane’s crackling radio and a large bag of M&M’s for company, Sylvie Kurtz realized a pilot’s life wasn’t for her. The stories zooming in and out of her mind proved more entertaining than the flight itself. Not a quitter, she finished her pilot’s course and earned her commercial license and instrument rating.
Since then, she has traded in her wings for a keyboard where she lets her imagination soar to create fictional adventures that explore the power of love and the thrill of suspense. When not writing, she enjoys the outdoors with her husband and two children, quilt making, photography and reading whatever catches her interest.
You can write to Sylvie at
P.O. Box 702, Milford, NH 03055.
And visit her Web site at www.sylviekurtz.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Aurora Cates—The librarian’s search for her missing sister takes her places she never dreamed of.
Adriano Constantin Esteleone, aka Ace Lyon—Pretending comes easily to this Seeker.
Sebastian Falconer—The head of Seekers, Inc.
Felicia Cates—Rory’s sister is missing, and all signs point to murder.
Hannah Cates—Felicia would never abandon the daughter she adores.
Bianca Esteleone—Ace’s sister is caught in the false promise of drugs.
Mike Fletcher—On the surface his business looks clean.
Curtis Fletcher—Mike’s little brother admires his big brother’s path.
Deacon, aka Preston Duberry—The Sons’ enforcer knows all the dirty secrets.
Taz, aka John Tassler, Jr.—The Sons’ president knows how to make an entrance.
Penny Webster—Hannah’s baby-sitter knows the consequences of not following the Sons’ law.
Karla Leach—Felicia’s best friend has escaped the gang’s influence.
Simon Bales—Is the vet providing the gang with chemicals?
Laci Drake—Deacon’s old lady knows more than she’ll tell.
Tank, aka Darren Stocking—The pug is willing to wade through manure for bits of information.
Ron Glasser—The ATF agent made a mistake and paid the ultimate price.
FELICIA’S MONSTER COOKIES
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup butter, softened
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp honey
1 ½ cups peanut butter
2 tsp baking soda
4 ½ cups oatmeal
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup candy-coated chocolate pieces
Mix ingredients together in the order listed. Drop by teaspoonful on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 350°F for 15 minutes. Yield: 7 dozen average-size cookies.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Prologue
Felicia Cates hesitated at the doorway of the cabin along the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River while her eyes adjusted to the darkness inside. Wind rustled through the winter-dead grass behind her like termites feeding on wood. The breeze was warm for April, but Felicia shivered anyway. Prickly burrs of doubts itched her skin as she searched the cabin’s one room. One last time, Felicia. For Hannah. You can do it.
A voice rumbled from deep inside the room. “Come on in, Felicia.”
“So this is the place you found for us?”
“What’s the matter?” Meanness weighted his voice. “You don’t like it?”
“No, it’s not that.” Heart revving like the Vulcan she’d pushed to the limit to get here, Felicia crooked one knee, then the other. She wanted to feel that V-twin engine roaring under her, taking her far from the nightmare she’d pitched into. “The baby. She’s waiting for me. I need to hurry.”
“Well, then, don’t just stand there.”
Eyes darting all around, she slowly crossed the threshold to the dusty floorboards in the empty room. Her daughter shouldn’t pay for her mistakes. “We’ll need a table, chairs, a bed.”
“Come closer.”
“It needs a good cleaning.” Swiping at the spider leg skitter of hair bristling the back of her neck, she pretended to see the possibilities the cabin offered. Dust cloaked every surface. The small windows were caked with the soot of neglect. Only a braided rug of indistinct color furnished the room. “I’ll need supplies.”
The floor creaked under his weight as he materialized from the shadows. His eyes were narrow slits that sparked with hatred. How could she have ever thought that flat mouth was sexy?
“When I say come here…” His voice was as hard as the muscles he honed every day at the gym. “I mean come here.”
His bulging fist snaked out and clamped around her biceps. She gasped as he yanked her off balance and jerked her close against his body. The wire she wore cut into the skin of her stomach. She hoped he couldn’t feel the microcassette at her waistband through his leather jacket. Please let him think it’s the buckle of my chaps.
Swallowing hard, she forced her gaze to latch on to the cold jade of his eyes. She’d always thought that the stories he spun were just for show, but she could see now why people were afraid of him. He didn’t have an inch of give. Not when it didn’t suit him. And always before she’d made sure to suit him. Until it threatened Hannah. He’d never wanted the baby. But he had to understand. Even a hard man like him had to see that she couldn’t keep on doing what she was doing and raise a child.
“I want to take Hannah to my sister’s.” She ratcheted her spine straight. “Then I’ll be all yours again.”
“I’ll take care of you.”
“I know you will.” But his eyes didn’t soften, and looking into them was like looking into an open steel trap. Did he know her secret? She thought of the agent waiting for her at the rest stop and felt her limbs turn to wood. She had to leave. Today. She couldn’t do this anymore. Any of it. If this case was as important as Glasser said, why had the ATF sent an agent fresh out of the academy to coach her? Why had they let her come so far off the main road with no backup? Glasser couldn’t protect her. No one could. She saw that now. She’d have to take care of herself.
“They won’t find us here,” he said, as if he’d read her mind. “You won’t have to testify against me.”
“I just need to see Hannah settled.”
He let her go, and she stumbled backwards, rubbing the arm that was numb from his tight hold. He pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and peeled off ten hundreds. “Is that enough for the trip?”
She nodded and reached for the bills. He held on to them, pinning her with his needle gaze. “Look at me. I want to see your eyes.”
She forced a smile and a flirty shake of her hair. He’d always loved her hair, the way it flowed like fire. “Windows to the soul?”
“Something like that.” He let go of the bills.
They felt like greasy eels as she slid them into the back pocket of her jeans. “Thank you.”
She took a step back, then pivoted toward the door. The smell of spring was in the air, but the feel of winter was still in her bones.
“Felicia?”
Her heart took a roller-coaster ride to her feet. Pulse chugging, she looked at him over her shoulder. “What?”
“If you cross me, I’ll kill you.” The scorpion sting of his words burned down her spine.
If she was going to start fresh, she had to make sure her past couldn’t follow her into the future. That meant leaving now before his suspicions were rewarded. It meant leaving Hannah with Candace. If she disappeared, then Candace would call her sister, and Aurora would come fetch Hannah and keep her safe. The ATF already had enough to bring him in and make it stick. And once he was in jail, she would collect Hannah and get on with the rest of their lives. All she had to do was stay out of sight for a while and everything would work out. “I’ll be back.”
Sweat trickled between her breasts and loosened the tape holding the wire. Slowly so he wouldn’t think it was anything but zipping up for the ride home on the bike, so he wouldn’t see how shaky her fingers were, she reached for the zipper pull on her leather jacket. The catch of tooth gripping tooth sounded like a machine gun in the empty room. As she headed for the door, her boots rattled the wood floor, causing mini quakes. Puffs of dirt blasted up, stuck to her sweat and coated her throat until it was dry.
His suspicion writhed toward her, black-adder toxic. Or was it her guilt? Stop it, Felicia. Her knees quaked, but she willed herself to keep walking. Keep cool. Don’t give him a reason to get mad.
Once she reached the doorstep sunshine hit her face. “Give me two days,” she lied—for Hannah, for herself, for their future, “and I’ll be back.”
“Two days,” he said, and a wave of relief trickled through her. He didn’t know.
Chrome winked in the sunshine. The red metallic paint of the fender sparkled like wet nail polish. She could almost feel the wind numb her cheeks. Seven more steps.
The river ran hard with snowmelt, and she wished she could ride it all the way to the Long Island Sound. Five more steps.
Don’t rush. Take it slow and easy. Tossing him a smile and a wave, she looked back. “Why don’t you get a couple of steaks, and we’ll celebrate our first night in our new home with your favorite meal?”
Three more steps to the bike. Three more steps to freedom.
Chapter One
“Where can I find a book on pioneers?” asked the girl standing in front of Aurora Cates’s station at the Maplewood Library reference desk. The girl’s face was a pincushion of hoops and small steel balls. Her tangerine T-shirt seemed two sizes too small—probably to show off the belly-button jewel. A henna tattoo decorated the wrist of the hand that pulled at short brown hair. People let their kids out of the house dressed like this?
Then she thought of Felicia and knew exactly how it could happen.
“What do you need to know?” Rory typed in the subject title, Pioneers, into the computer while the girl frowned at her blue assignment sheet.
“Uh. What they wore. How long they lived. Things like that.”
A selection of titles popped up on the screen. “Try the 978 section.”
“Okay.” The girl blinked at her. She didn’t have a clue where to go.
Rory walked her over to the section, selected three books and handed them to her. “That should get you started.”
“Thanks.”
“If that doesn’t do it, let me know and I’ll drag out the book of historical statistics.”
“Okay.”
As the girl slogged away, Rory basked in the ray of sunshine streaming through the arched window. Her favorite time of the day was morning when locks still barred out the public and she could enjoy the old building by herself. The contrast between the dark-wood furniture and paneling and the pale walls and columns with their classic baroque effect, never failed to give her pleasure. And the books—well, they were her pride and joy, and coming to work was like having a daily reunion with old friends.
In the past hour she’d fielded enough questions about the lifespan of settlers in the West in the nineteenth century to deduce that a class was reading Shane and had a homework question that dealt with comparing and contrasting the lives of the fictional characters with their own. It wasn’t that she minded answering vague questions by clueless school kids; that was, after all, part of what she was paid to do. But lately her mind was focused on the 24/7 Reference System the library was installing. She resented anything that took her away from that new passion.
Once installed, the virtual reference desk would stay open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. A patron could chat in real time with the library’s reference desk. If the library was closed, then the system would forward the patron’s request to a library that was still open—even if it was in another time zone. The possibilities dazzled her.
While helping the director test the system, Rory had come across a bug in the city’s computer system that made the program and the system act like feuding siblings. Half an hour more at the reference desk, then she could get back to her basement office and back to exterminating that bug. She loved how this new technology would allow access to just about any fact to anyone with only a click of the mouse. Any fact, any time, any place—as long as you were connected. All that knowledge. She shook her head and smiled a private smile.
Rory sat back in her chair at her station and watched as yet another student with a blue assignment sheet approached. If she were truthful, she’d have to admit she much preferred dealing with patrons online than face-to-face. Another reason to get the new program up and running as soon as possible. It would be her baby. Even the two-hundred and sixty-thousand books, magazines and tapes in the library’s collection, even the thousands of other books she could borrow from the network of libraries all over the country could not compare to the information she could unearth with this program in place. Need an answer from the Kansas Paint Contractors’ Handbook at 3:00 a.m.? Where the locals went to eat in Honolulu, Hawaii? What the people of Portland, Maine, considered the posh part of town? No problem. Just sign on and ask; someone will find the answer for you. She couldn’t wait.
Before the boy could ask his question, the phone in the pocket of her tweed suit jacket bleated. “Hang on a second.”
Carrying her cell phone on her was not proper library etiquette, but she was worried about her sister. Felicia had seemed to settle down after she got pregnant. She’d quit smoking and drinking and started talking about the future. There was joy in her voice when she spoke of Hannah’s milestones and sadness when she talked of leaving her with a sitter to go to work. Rory had urged her to leave New Hampshire and come live with her in D.C. Together they could make Hannah’s life comfortable and happy. A month ago, Rory had heard a new edge in Felicia’s voice. Felicia wouldn’t explain anything, but said she and Hannah would soon visit. Not a word from her since then. No answer at her apartment, either. And in the past few days, even the answering machine was no longer picking up.
Rory pressed the talk button. “Felicia?”
“Is this Aurora Cates?” a harried voice asked.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Candace Wilson. Felicia gave me your number.”
“Is Felicia all right?”
“No clue. She had me sit for Hannah yesterday and told me to call you if she wasn’t back by the time her shift started.”
This wasn’t good. Not at all. Why would Felicia leave Hannah with this sour-sounding woman and not return as fast as she could to her precious baby? “Where is she?”
“Look, I don’t know. All I know is that Felicia didn’t show up for work, and I can’t afford to miss another one of my shifts. You’ve got to come up and get Hannah or I’ll have to call DCYF.”
“DCYF?”
“Division of Child, Youth and Family.”
“No, don’t do that.” Felicia would never get Hannah back, not with her background, and losing Hannah could be the final cut that would send her reeling back to the wild life she was trying to tame for her daughter’s sake.
“Today’s my day off,” Candace said, “but tomorrow I’ve got to go in.”
“I’ll pay you. Or I’ll pay for a sitter. Please, just give me a chance to drive up.”
Candace agreed she could wait one more day for Rory’s arrival.
“I’m on my way,” Rory said, chewing on a thumbnail. “Just tell me where you are.”
Candace gave her directions.
“It’ll take me a day to get to New Hampshire,” Rory said. If she drove all night and stopped only for gas. Map. She would need a map—www.mapquest.com.
“A day’s all I can give you.”
Before she’d even hung up, Rory was drawing mental lists and letting the immensity of the task overwhelm her. Both hands on her desk, she closed her eyes and forced herself to draw in a calming breath. When she opened her eyes, the boy was still standing there, waiting mouth gaping open like a fish’s.
“Christine?” Rory shifted to her friend at the next station. “Would you mind helping this gentleman? I have an emergency.”
“Oh, sure.” Curiosity flickered in Christine’s eyes. The boy shuffled over to her station, and Rory hurried away to the library director’s office.
After arranging for an emergency leave, she collected her tapestry tote bag from the break room and left. As she wound her way through the stop-and-go traffic of Maplewood, she dialed the number she’d hoped she’d never have to use.
“Seekers, Inc., Liv Falconer speaking.”
“Is Sebastian in? This is Aurora Cates.”
“Rory! Nice to hear your voice again. He’s right here. Hang on.”
Liv Falconer had sustained a brain injury over a year ago. Her recovery since then was extraordinary. She couldn’t remember anything from her life before her accident, but she’d created an exciting new life for herself as she’d helped her husband start Seekers, Inc. They specialized in finding people. Sebastian had once been the best manhunter in the U.S. Marshals Service. Rory hoped he hadn’t lost any of his edge.
“Rory, how are you?” Sebastian’s voice sounded more relaxed than she’d ever heard it when he worked for the USMS. Being in charge of his own fate agreed with him.
“I need a favor.” She winced.
“I owe you one.”
She’d helped Sebastian find the information he needed to help Liv after her accident, but this would take a whole lot more than perusing a few databases for articles dealing with coma, brain injuries and amnesia.
“It’s my sister. Felicia’s missing.” Rory changed lanes to give herself time to make sense of the mess Felicia had dumped in her lap. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t worry.”
Sebastian laughed.
“Okay, I’d worry, but I wouldn’t call you. Since the baby she’d settled down, you know. She loves Hannah. She would never just leave her like that. She told me she was on her way here. And now she’s gone.”
“Okay, Rory, take a breath and start at the beginning.”
A red light registered on her unfocused mind and she pressed the brake. She gave Sebastian all the information she had. “I’m heading to Summersfield as soon as I can pack a bag. Can you check on the situation for me?”
“No problem.”
A horn honked and she realized the light had turned green. She shifted gears and turned left.
Her fault. She shouldn’t have given Felicia a chance to say no. Not after their parents had died and Rory had escaped to a job in Washington, D.C. Not when Felicia had called to tell Rory she was pregnant. Not last month when fear had crept into her voice. But handling Felicia had always made Rory feel incompetent. Even though she could locate the epitaph on Max Planck’s gravestone or the fashion fads of the 1950s or the rules of Bunko without breaking a sweat, she could never find the right book or article or piece of information that would let her understand her sister. Giving Felicia a loose rein was easier than fighting against the sheer muscle of so much unbridled anger.
“I have a man in Summersfield,” Sebastian said. “I’ll have him ask around.”
Rory groaned as traffic seemed to grind to a halt for no reason. In her low-slung Beetle, she couldn’t see past the UPS truck in front of her and was boxed in on three sides by SUVs. It was only three o’clock, for heaven’s sake. Didn’t these people have jobs? “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Take it easy. You go home and pack, and I’ll arrange for a car to pick you up and a plane to fly you here.”
She wanted to balk at the generosity, but she couldn’t. She’d let her wild-child sister down too many times. She had to hope that this time she hadn’t waited too long to rein her in.
IF THERE WAS ONE THING Adriano Constantin Esteleone knew, it was how to survive. You weren’t raised by a woman like Carlotta Esteleone on the mean streets of the Bronx without learning how to think on your feet. To survive, you had to trust and act on your gut instinct before you could analyze the facts of a situation. Stopping to think could get you dead.
He didn’t care what Sebastian Falconer said. Every fiber of his body told him a woman who looked like TNT was bound to detonate, and he couldn’t chance her blowing his cover.
“No.” Ace left no room for disagreement. The conference room in the basement offices of Seekers, Inc., also known as the Aerie, was boardroom-comfortable with its cream walls, soft lighting, leather chairs and oval cherrywood table. It still smelled of new carpet and fresh paint. But stuck in this leather chair, Ace felt as trapped as if he’d walked down the wrong alley in the middle of the night with a posse of thugs hard on his heels. He gripped the arms of the chair and scowled at Falconer, sitting at the head of the table. “I can’t have my attention divided like that.”
How could Falconer do this to him? He worked alone. Always had. It was part of the deal. As Ace Lyon, working as a grease monkey at Fletcher Automotive, he’d spent the last six months winning the Fletcher brothers’ confidence. And now Falconer wanted him to blow it all to bits for this woman just when the case was coming together? He couldn’t. This case was too important. It was scum like Fletcher who’d killed his mother and poisoned his sister. There was no way he was walking away. Not when he was this close to shutting down their corridor and getting his sister back on the right track.
“He’s right,” the woman who was causing all this upheaval said.
At least she was smart enough to know she didn’t belong in a place like Summersfield. She sat calmly across the table from him in her prim and proper green tweed suit. But all that wild red hair and those fire-gold eyes made her look as unstable as a homemade pipe bomb. That couldn’t be good.
“I want to know what happened to Felicia. That’s all. I’m not an agent or an operative or whatever it is you call the people who work for you.”
She was working as hard at ignoring him as Ace was at ignoring her. But it wasn’t happening. He was as aware of her as if she were a lit fuse and he was gunpowder. “Felicia’s hiding from Fletcher.”
“Felicia wouldn’t have left Hannah behind.” Rory almost knocked over the mug of coffee in front of her with her long fingers. “Something’s happened to her.”
“She’d leave Hannah behind if she thought it was the best thing for the kid.”
“She was leaving Summersfield,” Rory insisted, cupping curled fingers into curled fingers like two nested Cs.
“It’s all tied together, Rory.” Falconer tented his hands in front of him on the table. A deep V creased between his eyebrows as he laid out the facts for the woman. His dark gaze tracked from Ace to Rory. “Felicia was involved in the situation in Summersfield. There’s multi-agency task force involved in breaking this case.”
“Exactly,” she and Ace said at the same time. Finally Falconer was seeing the light.
Rory’s spine lost some of its starch. “That’s why she was coming to live with me.”
“Felicia was working for the ATF,” Falconer said.
“Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms?” The healthy blush of Rory’s cheeks drained to the color of smoke. Her hands flattened on the table as if she needed the support to hold herself together. “Felicia? Undercover? No, she wouldn’t. Not with Hannah. Not after…” Fingertips red from the force of their pressure on the table, she stared at Falconer as if she were willing him to take back his claim. “No, Felicia wouldn’t do that.”
Went to show how little she knew about her own sister. There were things he could tell her about Felicia Cates that would turn the fire in Rory’s hair to ash. “She was busted for selling meth a month ago.”
Rory’s head snapped toward him, sending her hair whipping like flames in a draft. “No. Not with Hannah—”
“The baby’s what got her the break,” Ace pointed out. “She agreed to wear a wire so she wouldn’t have to spend time in jail.”
Pushing aside the plate of blueberry muffins and the bowl of fresh-cut pineapple, Rory practically crawled across the table and banged her fist in front of him. Her gaze scorched his, and its heat struck all the way to his gut. “I don’t believe it. She’s changed.”
“She was under a lot of pressure—” But even Falconer’s cool words couldn’t douse the anger blazing in her eyes.
“Felicia wouldn’t do anything to put Hannah in danger,” Rory insisted.
“Well, she did.” Ace resisted the urge to look away from her scalding accusation. “And what you’re walking into is a finely tuned drug operation. Mike Fletcher runs the local distribution, but we’re after the guy who feeds him what he sells. There’s a regular alphabet soup of agencies wanting a piece of this.” As Rory slunk back into her chair, he turned to Falconer, focusing on the goal, not on the burn rising too quickly up his neck. “If she starts asking questions, she’ll mess up the groundwork I’ve set.”
“She has a legitimate reason to ask questions,” Falconer countered. “Questions you couldn’t ask without raising suspicions.”
“She’ll blow my cover.”
Her eyes darkened to a molten gold as hot as embers. “As what? A long-haired, Italian pirate?”
The leather jacket, chaps over jeans, engineer boots and bandana were part of what it took to fit in. If he knew nothing else, he knew how to fit in. He would not let her put a match to his emotions. He was better than that. “Fitting in is an art. One you can’t learn in books.”
“I don’t have to fit in. I’m her sister.”
“It’s not going to work.” She was going to fight him every step of the way, and he wouldn’t stand a chance to make his way deeper into the organization.
“She knows how to find information.” The hard set of Falconer’s face told Ace he’d already made up his mind. “I’ve used her skills in the past.”
Fighting this would get him a reassignment—or worse, dismissal. He needed the top-notch salary Falconer was willing to pay for his mastery at fitting in with the biker crowd. Ace swore silently, never letting the mask of control crack. He knew how to play the role. He’d done it all of his life. “This isn’t a book job, Falconer. These people aren’t the ROMEO club.”
“Romeo club?” Rory asked.
“Retired Old Men who Eat Out,” Falconer said. “A bunch of retired guys who formed a motorcycle club and meet at restaurants.”
“The Sons of Steel don’t mess with paper and computers. They’re like old-time gunslingers. They live by the law of the meanest.”
“There are triggers everywhere,” Falconer said. “Rory knows how to follow their tracks.”
“That’s Kingsley’s expertise.”
Falconer didn’t give. “I need Kingsley here. Rory will be on-site.”
“She wouldn’t know a handlebar from a fender—”
“—motorcycles.about.com,” Rory said.
Ace ground his back teeth. “Or an amphetamine from an aspirin—”
“—usdoj.gov.”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s going to come in real handy when Mike and Curtis Fletcher come sniffing up your skirt.” He planted one finger on the table in front of her. “What web site are you going to look up to fight two guys who take what they want without caring who it hurts? They’re going to be all over you. Are you ready for that?”
She didn’t even have the decency to flinch. She just sat there staring at him like a wick feeding on lamp oil.
“That’s where you come in,” Falconer said. “Your job’s to see that that doesn’t happen. Anybody who tries to lay a hand on her has to go through you.”
“I’d be fighting the whole gang every day.”
“Make sure you win them all.”
A baby-sitter. Falconer was asking him to become a friggin’ baby-sitter. Ace didn’t have time for that. Not when he was so close to shutting down this whole operation. “She’s a damned librarian. She doesn’t know the first thing about working in the field.”
Rory picked up the laptop at her side and booted it up. Long fingers dancing on the keys, she worked as if no one else was in the room.
Falconer peeled back the paper cup on a muffin. “She has a keen sense of observation.”
Lip peeled from teeth in scorn. “Real keen. Her sister’s been eyeball-deep in manure for months. She only noticed when Felicia disappeared. And if you want my opinion, Felicia disappeared on purpose. She couldn’t take the heat and jumped out of the frying pan.”
Rory glared at him. “No doubt because you’d turned up the pressure for her to wear that wire and made her jump right into the fire.”
“She doesn’t know who I am.”
“But you were still ready to sacrifice her for your case. Who, other than me, worried when she disappeared?”
“I’m not ATF. I’m not FBI. I’m my own man.” Ace swore. She’d done it after all. She’d made him lose his cool. “She’s been gone only two days.” And he had noticed.
“I don’t care if it’s two hours, two days or two weeks. She wouldn’t have left Hannah behind.” The cold withdrawal in her voice took him aback. What had he said? “I don’t care about your case. I just want to find Felicia.”
“If we find Felicia,” Falconer said, “we can solve the case.”
“And that calls for field work.” Ace’s hands curled into fists. “You know it’s going to go bad.”
“Bad?” Rory said. “What’s he talking about?”
Nobody was going to believe that someone like him had the hots for someone like her. And if Ace didn’t stake a claim to her, she was going to be fair game. “Sooner or later somebody’s going to get suspicious.”
“Not if you keep your cool,” Falconer said. He turned to Rory. Her turn for the skewer. “If you find yourself getting up in the morning afraid, then pull out. That’s no reflection on you. Either way, we’ll find Felicia. I made you a promise, and I’ll keep it.”
Rory nodded slowly at Falconer, then looked up at Ace. “I may not be an undercover ace, Mr. Esteleone, but information is my business. You moved to New Hampshire last September.” She punched the page-up button on her computer. “You placed your sixteen-year-old sister, Bianca, at the Cheshire Academy.” She raised an eyebrow in snooty judgment. “Specializes in dealing with troubled teens, I see. Not cheap. Quite a coup for someone with less than five hundred dollars in his bank account. I’m guessing there was some trouble back in New York. Ah, yes, there it is. Shoplifting. Runaway. And not for the first time.”
How had she found this information? Bianca’s records were sealed. Leaning back in the chair, he slung an arm over the chair’s back and gave her his best impression of aloof. Stay cool, Ace. Don’t let her get to you. What did she know about Bianca? About their lives? Facts only told one part of the story. Certainly not enough to pass judgment. “What does that prove? That you can find your way around the web? I already knew that. It’s all facts.” He waved his free arm toward the wide outdoors outside the reinforced concrete walls of the basement bunker. “Facts won’t keep you safe out there.”
“Facts are what you’re looking for. I can find them.”
“Evidence is what convicts. For that you need the ability to become whatever you’re hunting.”
“Okay.” Falconer brushed muffin crumbs from his fingers. “This isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
“You care for your sister,” Rory put her laptop back in its case at her feet, “so you took her out of a bad situation. That’s a fact. I’m trying to do the same.”
“Then you’re two years too late. You should’ve yanked her out the moment she set eyes on Mike Fletcher.”
“Enough.” Falconer pushed the plate in front of him. His dark glare demanded compliance.
The flame completely fizzled out of Rory’s eyes, and Ace wondered why he’d thought of her as such a potent threat. She was nothing but a small woman who was bent on getting in a situation that would drown every last bit of the fire inside her. He turned to Falconer. “She doesn’t understand how dangerous Fletcher is.”
“Then you’ll have to explain. Aurora is going to Summersfield whether we want her to or not. Legally, there’s nothing we can do to stop her. We might as well make use of her expertise. I want you to keep an eye on her. Make sure no harm comes to her.”
“I have to find Felicia.” And in her voice he heard a familiar note of shame. He clamped back a curse. He didn’t want to feel anything for her, especially not understanding.
“Kingsley will be her contact,” Falconer continued. “She’s not going to interfere with your work.”
“Yeah.” Ace crossed his arms over his chest. That he had to see. He’d bet his last five hundred that she’d have half of Summersfield ticked off at her before the end of the day. Curious women always caused trouble.
Rory slanted him the coldest smile he’d ever seen. “I’ll pretend you don’t exist.”
“Yeah, you do that.” The ice, he realized, was a poor mask for the fire still burning hot somewhere in that lean body. Like the suit that did its best to hide the curves in the right places, she was damping back her true nature. That ignited a spark of curiosity he quickly snuffed. Don’t get involved. She was just one more problem in a whole vipers’ nest of them.
Kingsley, the electronics wizard who ran the Seekers’ command center, knocked and poked his head through the door. With his red suspenders and easygoing nature, Kingsley reminded Ace of a golden retriever. “I have the parts you wanted.” He held out a box with the rocker covers Ace was supposed to be picking up for his classic Indian.
On his way out, Kingsley gave Rory the once over, and Ace had to laugh. “Forget it, pal. She’ll burn you before she gives you the time of day.”
It wasn’t until he grabbed his gloves and sunglasses that he remembered there was a good reason he hadn’t become a firefighter. Fire made him choke, and he was partial to breathing. “Give me a chance to get back before you send her out.”
“Candace will call the Division Child, Youth and Family if I don’t get there before her shift.” Rory scraped her chair back and collected her belongings.
For a second, the image of kindling flashed across his mind, and he sighed silently. “If she knows you’re coming, she’ll wait.”
“How do you know?”
He slid the sunglasses over his eyes. “Because I deal with people, not names on a computer screen.”
He could feel the scorch of her gaze long after he’d fired up the Indian and opened the throttle as far as it would go. That couldn’t be good. Not at all.
Chapter Two
The instant Rory saw her niece, a pool of guilt filled her to near drowning. Why hadn’t she come to visit in the past nine months? Why hadn’t she dragged Felicia and Hannah home with her? Why had she let all the painful memories stored in the granite bed of this state turn her into a coward?
Across the cramped living room, Hannah sprawled in a mesh-sided travel crib swaddled in a pair of pink footed pajamas. Her arms were splayed at her sides, and her loose fists showed off smooth palms and tiny fingers. A nine-patch quilt in shades of pink lay beside one hand. One corner looked gummed as if Hannah had used it as a pacifier. Flyaway curls of a soft brown with red highlights surrounded her face. A face that, in sleep, spelled innocence and vulnerability, and at once made Rory feel as needed as a calculus book in a poetry class.
She was used to order, to things done her way, to being the master of her days. This baby, who didn’t look much bigger than a library edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, actually had her pulse skittering as if she were facing an armed madman demanding she produce plans for a nuclear device. She swallowed hard. “I don’t know anything about babies.”
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud until Candace’s voice grated against her ears. “Hannah’s an easy baby.”
Which meant next to nothing to Rory. Easy was an instruction manual, and she didn’t see one lying conveniently around. She let her tapestry tote bag slip from her shoulders to the rust-carpeted floor and peered farther over the edge of the crib at the creature sleeping there. What did Hannah eat? How long did she sleep? How did one entertain a nine-month-old child? Then there were diapers and baths and tears. The responsibility of it all gave her legs the sturdiness of wet sponges. She’d never worn helplessness well. “Tell me about her routine.”
Candace, dressed in black stretch pants and a light-blue sweatshirt with a sledding snowman printed on the front, finished tidying up the coffeemaker in the kitchenette and moved to the tiny living room where a soap opera played on the television. “Felicia usually covers the breakfast and lunch shifts at the diner, so Hannah goes to the sitter’s around 5:00 a.m. and gets picked up around 3:00 p.m.”
Candace headed to a pile of knitting on the seat of a faded lime-green armchair. She stuffed the balls of light-blue yarn and steel needles into a yellowing canvas bag with a Summersfield town centennial logo. Then hands on hips, she frowned at the floor as if she were looking for something. “Other than that, Hannah pretty much leads the way. She still takes a couple of naps a day, but sleeps through the night. She’s a good eater. It doesn’t take much to keep her happy.”
With a humph, Candace bent at the waist and picked up a glossy magazine, featuring a snowflake sweater and a rosy-cheeked pre-schooler, that had somehow strayed beneath the armchair. The map of lines on the older woman’s face placed her age on the strong side of fifty. Her short, bristle-stiff hair was still brown, although gray roots showed. Rory had not seen her stand in place for longer than a second since she’d arrived—and even then, her knitting needles had clicked like an old-fashioned typewriter manned by manic fingers. There was nothing soft or sweet about her, yet there was a spirit of generosity Rory found hard to ignore.
“Thanks for waiting for me.” She could handle Hannah on her own. Felicia had done it. So could she. How hard could it be?
Candace humphed again as she grabbed her black Mary Poppins handbag from the half wall separating the narrow kitchenette from the living room. “She’s a good kid.”
Rory wasn’t sure if she meant Felicia or Hannah. “Have you heard from Felicia?”
“Not a word.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
Candace slid the handles of the canvas knitting bag over her shoulders. “I learned a long time ago to mind my own business.”
“But—”
“Summersfield ain’t no Currier and Ives postcard, honey. It’s all I know, and I don’t want to cause myself any grief. Felicia, well, she made some decisions that are hard to undo. And if you want my advice—although somehow I doubt you’ll take it—I’d wrap that pretty baby up and take her away.”
“I have to find Felicia.” For all her faults her sister had finally done something right.
“It ain’t going to change anything.”
“You think she’s…hurt?” Rory could not bring herself to say dead out loud.
Frowning, Candace rummaged through her bag. “What I think don’t matter.”
“If Felicia’s in danger, I have to help her.”
Out came a purple bear with one ragged ear. Candace handed the plush toy to Rory. “Have you ever thought that maybe it’s too late to help her?”
Rory blinked in surprise. “No, I hadn’t.”
Not really.
At least she’d discounted that dire possibility. She still thought of Felicia as the headstrong kid who had a knack for checking out when the going got tough. She’d run away from school on a regular basis. She’d run from summer camp. She’d run from home. Rory had thought Hannah’s arrival had changed Felicia…and on the trip up to New Hampshire, she’d talked herself into believing this was just another one of Felicia’s disappearing acts that would resolve itself within a few days. Once she worked herself out of the quagmire of her emotions, Felicia usually returned.
Except that Candace’s phone call asking her to come get Hannah had spooked Rory. It was so premeditated an action for a girl like Felicia who lived for the moment. Sebastian’s assertion that Felicia was working undercover for the ATF hadn’t helped. That, too, was out of character. It just didn’t make sense. Felicia would never have done that. Not after what had happened to their parents.
Except maybe for a chance to stay with Hannah.
Rory kneaded at the tension hiking her shoulders to her ears.
Then when Ace—really, what kind of name was that for a grown man?—had brought up his theory that Felicia was hiding, she’d jumped at the saving grace of the probability that she wasn’t too late. Because if something had happened to Felicia, then that long-haired Italian pirate with his show-off muscles was right, and Rory had waited too long to find her courage. And if she’d failed Felicia when Felicia needed her most, Rory wasn’t sure she could live with the guilt.
Felicia was alive. Scared, but alive. Rory had to believe that.
Candace jerked her head toward the kitchenette. “My number’s on the memo board on the fridge. Penny Webster sits for Hannah. She’s right upstairs. Her number’s there, too, if you need her. So’s the number of Hannah’s doctor.”
“Thank you for all you’ve done.” Rory rubbed her arms against a core-deep chill that shivered through her in spite of the warm afternoon sunlight pouring through the bay window.
Candace wrung the doorknob and yanked the door open. “She’d have done the same for me.”
With that, Candace was gone, and Hannah was all hers. Rory slanted a glance at the sleeping baby and gulped. She reached into her tote bag for her laptop. First things first. She needed information on nine-month-old children, and she needed it fast: www.parenting.com. Then she could worry about Ace Lyon and Mike Fletcher and the illegal activities that hid behind the illusion of New England small-town charm in Summersfield.
RORY WAS STRUGGLING with a spoonful of mashed carrots when the roar of a motorcycle peeling around the town common snapped her out of her concentration and Hannah, who was strapped to her high chair, into a wail. Whatever Felicia lacked in proper nutrition for herself, she’d made sure Hannah would not run out of junior meat sticks, vegetables and fruits any time soon. There were enough jars in the cupboard to feed an entire daycare class for a year. Rory had spent the last half hour trying to interest Hannah in chicken sticks, mashed carrots and green beans. Finger eating might encourage dexterity, but it sure didn’t make for a neat meal. Armed with a baby spoon she waved like a baton, Hannah had seemed more interested in decorating Rory’s hair with carrots than eating them.
Until the motorcycle.
What kind of idiot races down a main road where children could be playing? Rory picked up the bawling Hannah and headed for the bay window facing the street.
The black-and-chrome steel monster stopped below. When the bearded Viking looked up, she swallowed hard. Was it too late to douse the lights and pretend no one was home? She recognized him, of course. Felicia had sent pictures. Even in the Christmas family portrait that was supposed to show tight bonds, there was something cold and empty about Mike’s eyes that had her questioning what Felicia saw in him.
Mike shut off the engine and leaned the monster bike on its stand. Hannah’s wail subsided to sniffles, and she promptly mashed her tear-streaked face into Rory’s hair. Had she packed shampoo? Patting Hannah’s diaper-padded rear, Rory kissed the crown of the baby’s head. “It’s okay, little angel. I won’t let him touch you. I don’t care if he is your father.”
Rory’s heart pounded to the rhythm of the heavy boots tromping on the stairs. Wanting to prevent his entry into the apartment, she inched the door open. Night air with an edge of frost swirled around her legs.
“Well, hello there, little girl.” His voice had a certain seductive edge to it—if you were into snakes. He didn’t look at Hannah, but straight at her. It set Rory’s teeth on edge, but she swallowed her sarcastic retort. If she wanted to get information out of him, she could not start on adversarial ground.
His green eyes widened with appreciation as his gaze slid down her body, making her wish for steel armor.
“What’s wrong with her?” Mike asked as Hannah’s tears hiccupped to new heights. His shaggy blond hair brushed his shoulders. His slightly darker beard could use a trim. He wore the standard biker gear of black engineer boots, denim jeans with a chain securing a wallet from his belt to a rear pocket, a black jacket with Mike tooled into the leather, and a gray T-shirt with the words Graberbootie & Pinch printed in darker gray on its front. Bits of various tattoos showed at the collar of the T-shirt and the cuffs of his jacket sleeves. Most disturbing of all, he carried a Buck Knife at his belt. Wasn’t that illegal for a felon?
“She misses her mother.” Rory placed a protective hand over the baby’s tender head. Maybe she wasn’t totally devoid of motherly instincts after all because the last thing she wanted was this hulk to place his greasy hands on Hannah’s soft skin.
“Well, she should feel right at home then.” His oily gaze settled on her chest. Rory shifted Hannah to cover the objects of his interest. “You look just like her with all that red hair.”
Had he even noticed that Felicia’s eyes were blue not amber? Or was his interest stuck on breasts even for the woman he supposedly loved? “What can I do for you, Mike?”
He leaned against the doorframe and hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. “I heard you were here and wanted to make sure you settled in okay.”
“Do you know where Felicia is?”
He shrugged. “Not a clue.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“Nah, it’s just like her to skip out like this. Ask anyone. We had a disagreement. Give a couple of days, and she’ll be back.”
Before Hannah, before the ATF thing, Rory might have agreed with him. But now, seeing Mike so calm and indifferent, an icy premonition skated down her back. Facts, Rory, look for facts. Emotions never got you anything but hurt. “A disagreement about what?”
His gaze narrowed, and its warning hit home as surely as if he’d used the knife. Don’t mess with me or I’ll mess with you. “Man and woman things.”
That didn’t sound good. “Where do you think she went?”
“Who knows?”
Rory made a mental note to ask Sebastian to check on Felicia’s credit-card and bank-account activity. “Take a guess.”
His gaze strayed to the horizon, copper against the jagged silhouette of the row housing and brick shops surrounding the town common. A car horn tooted below and a pair of swishing headlights accentuated the harsh lines of Mike’s face. “Sometimes she goes to her friend Karla’s place and they have a pity party.”
And left Hannah behind? And a cryptic message to Candace to call Rory if she didn’t show up for her shift? It didn’t make sense. “Does Karla have a last name?”
“Leach.”
“Where does Karla live?” Why did this feel as if she were pulling worms out of a carcass?
“Manchester, I think.” He shrugged again. “Sometimes Felicia goes on benders and holes up in a motel.”
Not since Hannah. Rory would bet her last dollar on that. As if she agreed, Hannah tugged on Rory’s hair and babbled a few watery syllables. “Well, thanks. I’ll start with that.”
“It’s best if you just let her work things out.” He said this as if Felicia were a bad dog who’d run away and would surely return when she got hungry enough.
“She has a baby to take care of.”
“She left the kid in good hands.”
“Candace has to work.”
He jerked his head toward the apartment upstairs where the soft strains of Enya trickled through the open window. “That’s why she’s got the sitter lined up.”
“A baby needs structure, routine.”
He gave her another slimy once-over. “A stranger looking after her sure won’t give her that. She knows Penny.”
“You’re right. But I’m family, so she might as well get used to me.”
He pushed himself off the doorframe. “If you need anything, you let me know.”
Because you’ve been so helpful already? “Thank you.”
He took two steps onto the narrow deck, then turned. “Hey, there’s a party at the clubhouse next Saturday. Why don’t you come? Who knows, Felicia might show up. She was always up for a good party.”
Rory’s hold on Hannah, who busily gummed a strand of Rory’s hair while she mouthed nonsense syllables, tightened. Felicia was missing and he wanted her to go to a party? What kind of prehistoric slime was he? “Hannah—”
“I’ll pay for the sitter.”
As if that was going to make a difference. Don’t worry, Hannah, I’m not going to leave you.
The chain to Mike’s wallet jingled, catching Hannah’s attention. A wet strand of her own hair stuck against Rory’s cheek as Hannah reached a chubby hand down toward the chain. Mike didn’t seem to notice his daughter’s interest in him. He peeled three twenties from the wad, then handed them to Rory. When she didn’t free her hands to accept his gift, he stuffed the bills in the pocket of her linen pants, copping a feel as he released the cash.
“Uh, well, thanks.” She did her level best not to flinch. “I’ll think about it.”
His lecherous grin made her queasy. “You do that.”
They’re going to be all over you. Are you ready for that? Ace was right. She wasn’t ready for this. Not one bit.
FINDING TROUBLE had taken her longer than Ace thought. But his money was still safe. She’d found the jackpot before the sun had fully set. Was he going to have to blow his cover to keep Mike’s meat hooks off her on day one? He’d told Falconer this wasn’t a good idea, but had his boss listened? No. What pull did Rory have to make Falconer put an operation in jeopardy? Couldn’t be sex. The man didn’t see past his wife.
Ace melted into the shadows on the side of the wood-framed New England triple-decker, trying to keep tabs on the conversation between his target and his albatross. The thing about this old turn-of-the-century hurry-up housing was that it was built cheaply. Walls were thin and sound carried.
And of course, she was handling this all wrong. The tone of her voice was too uppity. He could almost see her looking down her dainty nose at Mike—even though she was a good eight inches shorter. That was going to go over real well. She didn’t even try to engage him in the usual polite conversation. No, the firebrand went straight to meaty questions that sounded like barely couched accusations. And what was she doing to the kid to have her bawling like that? Probably had the diaper on too tight or the pajamas on backwards. There wasn’t a maternal bone in that electric body.
Finally, Hannah’s cries lessened and turned to a watery gurgle. Mike’s weight shifted and the stairs creaked as he started down. Ace slipped down the street and made like he was just now rounding the corner to the building and his ground-floor apartment.
Mike straddled the bike and nodded a greeting. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
There was no such thing as partial allegiance to the gang. Full membership required becoming active in criminal activity. Ace knew this outing tonight was more than a deal; it was a test. One he couldn’t fail.
“Felicia home?” Ace took a half step toward the front door of his apartment as if he didn’t care one way or another.
“Nah, her sister’s in town and I was paying my respects.” Mike pressed the starter and his bike roared to life. Perfectly tuned, it purred tiger-smooth.
“Red hair?” Ace glanced up.
“Yeah, what’s it to you?” Mike revved the engine.
Ace cracked a hungry-wolf smirk. You had to talk to Mike on his level. Women were not people; they were possessions. “I’ve always been partial to redheads.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Red hair means fire, if you know what I mean.”
Laughter exploded from Mike. “Not this one. Cold as ice, man. Cold as ice.”
“So she’s fair game?” He had to stake his claim early if he wanted to keep her safe. But he had to do it without stepping on toes if he was to keep his cover.
Mike’s gaze narrowed. “She’s all yours. But I’ll tell you, there’s easier tail to be had if you’re in need.”
“I’ve always liked a challenge.”
“Then you’ll love our run tonight.” Mike pulled out a vial from his pocket. The lump inside looked like a piece of dull quartz. “Want some?”
“Can’t get loaded while I’m on parole. Might get drug-tested. There ain’t no way I’m going back in the slam.” He could keep the drug offers at bay for a while, but he had to comply with some things. Ace was charged with infiltrating the gang as deeply as possible. Tonight that meant receiving stolen property—a load of semi-automatic rifles in exchange for meth—to show his loyalty.
The quality of methamphetamine that Mike provided wholesale to pushers was high. Every branch of law enforcement in the state wanted to find the lab supplying Mike’s gang community. But when pressed, busted dealers were more afraid of ratting on Mike than of going to jail. Tonight Ace had the chance to prove he was one of them, worthy of entering their sacred inner circle.
Other than Falconer, no other law enforcement jurisdiction knew who Ace was. This was to guard against a possible inside informant in some part of the alphabet soup of agencies trying to end up top dog when it came time to grab headlines. A mole somewhere had already cost a DEA agent his life. If anything went wrong, he’d be treated just like any other felon.
A certain sickness squeezed his gut. Always before action came a stab of apprehension. Natural. Desirable even. But it was his job and he’d do it—even if it meant skating a fine line between lawbreaker and law enforcer.
This corridor had to die. He wanted to send the bikers—the ones selling crack, receiving stolen property and guns—to jail. And the sooner he could become one of them, the sooner he could shut it down and get back to getting his life—and Bianca’s—back on track.
Mike nodded and returned the lump to the vial, then to his pocket. “I’ll meet you by the warehouse in ten minutes.”
By the time Ace got there, Mike would have on a business suit and a minivan ready to go. Wearing your colors while committing a felony didn’t pay. Mike had learned appearing straight was a good cover for criminal acts.
Time to clean up and make sure every detail of this little outing was caught on tape.
Smile, scum, you’re on candid camera.
WHEN ACE RETURNED home three hours later, he was wrung out and strung out. He wanted nothing more than to scrub away the stink from this job and fall into bed. But as he rounded the corner, a baby’s exhausted yet mournful cries stopped him. He looked up to the second story, saw light in the window and Rory pacing back and forth, bouncing the baby against her shoulder. Her body language screamed fear and desperation.
Stuffing both his hands in the front pockets of his black Dockers, he let his head fall back. A crooked moon—a fingernail-paring shy of full—hung in the sky rimmed with a ring of cold light that made the stars around it seem to shiver. He didn’t want to go up. He didn’t want to get mixed up with Rory and her quixotic quest for answers she didn’t really want.
But the kid’s tears cut him. He remembered what it was like to want someone with your whole being and not understand why you were being denied.
“You can’t fix the world, Ace,” he told himself as he started up the stairs. “You can’t even fix your own tiny sandbox slice of it.”
But he could quiet tears. He’d gotten good at that. He wasn’t doing this for Rory. He was doing it for the kid. He’d been there.
THE KNOCK at this ungodly hour made Rory skid to a halt and her gaze fly to the door. Had she locked it after Mike left? Of course, there was no safety chain. No deadbolt, either. Certainly no security system. Felicia had often joked she didn’t even need to lock her door at all. The pause in action seemed to fortify Hannah and her cries became lamentations worthy of Jeremiah.
“Who is it?” Rory redoubled her jiggling of Hannah. Was it too much? She’d read somewhere about shaken baby syndrome and was suddenly petrified the police had come to drag her to jail for endangering a child.
“Ace,” came the answer drowned by Hannah’s wail.
Shoot and drat. She didn’t need him here right now. What could he possibly want at this hour of the night? “Now’s not a good time.”
He came in anyway. The room seemed to fold in around him, making the lime armchair and the oak rocker look as if they were meant for a dollhouse. She’d obviously not locked the blasted door. As he ambled toward her with his sure and steady stride, her pulse quickened, her breath shortened. Nothing to be afraid of, she assured herself, and frowned at the wooly flutter in her stomach. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. That was it.
With one look, Ace seemed to assess the whole situation and find her lacking. She bristled and barked at him before he could cut her down. “I’m handling it.”
“I can see that.”
His mocking tone didn’t help her mood. Had she ever been this tired? She wanted nothing more than to go back to D.C. and the Maplewood Library where someone would be glad to see her. He reached for Hannah.
Rory swung away, rounding over the baby. Where had this protective instinct come from? “No.”
“You’re too tense.” A vein of irritation ran through his voice.
Too tense? She was perfectly relaxed. Okay, maybe not. But with good reason. She’d gone over every inch of the checklist on the web site and found no grounds for Hannah’s obvious distress. Dry diaper. Full tummy. No signs of teething. No fever. No rash. Just buckets of tears that were ripping her heart and soul to shreds. How did mothers survive a child’s infancy?
“Just hand her over for a minute.”
Despite his presentable black Dockers and black silk shirt, Ace looked like the quintessential bad boy and wore an attitude to match. Ripped, that’s what the teenage girls back home would have called him. He had an athlete’s body that must have taken years of pumping iron to sculpt into this rugged beauty. Unlike Felicia, Rory had never entertained bad-boy fantasies, and she certainly wasn’t about to start now—no matter how tired she was.
“I’m trying to help.” When he shook his head, the lamplight caught the tired lines webbing his eyes. She’d seen him talk to Mike and walk into the apartment below Felicia’s. Were the baby’s cries keeping him up? However much danger a man like him could pose a grown woman, she didn’t think Sebastian would hire a man who would abuse a child. And wasn’t Ace his sister’s guardian?
With a sigh of resignation, she handed the bawling, squirming Hannah to Ace. In his big hands, her cries immediately abated by half.
That wasn’t fair. She’d done all the work. He grinned at her—a much too rakish smile. “I told you you were too tense.”
“I’ve tried everything.”
His gaze took in her laptop with its parenting page in full view. “Some things you can’t learn from books, sweetheart.”
Before she could spit out a snappy comeback, he strode toward the bedroom at the back of the apartment. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back.”
As promised, he was. He cradled the baby in the crook of his arm as if he’d done this before, and he carried one of Felicia’s sweaters in his free hand. He launched it at her. She caught it and slanted him a puzzled look.
“Put it on.” He rocked Hannah whose cries now seemed to take a major effort.
Rory held the blue sweater out in front of her and frowned at the suspicious stain on the shoulder. “I’m not cold.”
“Do you have to argue about everything? Just put it on.”
She was too tired to protest, so she slipped on the V-neck pullover. Ace handed her Hannah who snuggled against the wool and soon fell asleep.
“What just happened?”
“You confused her.” Ace’s voice was both rough and warm. He looked much too satisfied, and she wanted to smack his smirk off his face as much as she wanted to hug him for making Hannah stop crying. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could have held on before she’d joined Hannah’s chorus of tears with her own.
Hannah looked like an angel once more, becoming heavy in Rory’s arms as she relaxed more deeply into sleep. How could someone so small have made such a big fuss? “I’m not following you.”
“You look like Felicia, but you don’t sound like Felicia. And you don’t smell like Felicia.”
The proverbial light bulb finally clicked on. “And Felicia’s scent is on the sweater.”
“Right.”
“Where did you learn that trick?”
“The school of hard knocks, sweetheart.”
She cringed at “sweetheart,” but said nothing, afraid to tense up too much and set Hannah off on another crying jag.
She glanced at the crib. Would Hannah stay asleep if she put her down?
As if he’d read her mind, Ace said, “Go ahead, put her down. She’s exhausted. She’ll probably sleep through till morning.”
Rory carefully laid Hannah in her crib. Clutching the quilt, she wasn’t sure if she should wrap her in it or not. What if Hannah pushed her face in the folds and smothered herself?
Ace grabbed the blanket and tucked it expertly around Hannah’s pajama-clad body, leaving her splayed arms free.
“I’d get some shut-eye while you can, if I were you,” he said, hands on hips, looking every bit the rogue pirate.
The advice made perfect sense. Why couldn’t she just shut up and take it? “You’re not me.”
He kicked up both hands in surrender. “Doesn’t matter to me either way.”
She ran a hand through her hair. Her fingers got stuck on dried carrot mush. She needed a long, hot—no make that scalding—shower. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long day.”
“They’re all long days when there’s a baby around.”
She didn’t like the mocking shine in his dark-chocolate eyes, but she was way past witty and nearly all the way into zombie. She sank into the lime armchair and let her tense muscles relax. “How does she do it?”
“Felicia doesn’t try to go it alone. She asks for help.”
Implied fault stressed the silence. Trust. She didn’t have any.
Why should she? What did she know about him? That he was one of Sebastian’s Seekers. A plus. That he was playacting the role of a biker. A minus. That he was good with Hannah. Another plus. That his skin was olive, his cheekbones sharp, his nose straight, his mouth generous, kissable. She quashed a groan. Definitely a minus.
She was being too sensitive. She was letting his very presence become a burr because his expertise with Hannah made her feel incompetent.
But trust grew with time and intimacy. Neither of these existed between them. How could they when Sebastian had handed them opposite ends of the same rope?
She cocked her head, feeling the steam of temper crushing her chest, pounding at her temples. “Trusting a biker is what got Felicia into all this trouble.”
He bent toward her, resting a hand on the back of the armchair, trapping a strand of runaway hair beneath his palm. His body heat shimmied into her. His scent of sweat and musk had her turning her nose toward it as if it were an aroma worth sniffing. His gaze was so sharp she angled her head to avoid its honed edge and felt it graze her anyway. “No, what got her into this mess was not trusting her gut.”
Chapter Three
Rory counted two diners, one pizzeria, two antique stores, one gift shop, one florist’s shop, one barber, one beauty salon, one ice-cream parlor, one service station, two churches and four bars squashed together around the picture-postcard town common. A cool breeze snapped at the flags flying from shop poles. The sun played hide and seek with puffy white clouds against a picture-perfect blue sky.
Pushing Hannah’s stroller along the sidewalk, she noted the charm of the hunter-green-and-white bandstand circled by a bed of purple crocuses and yellow daffodils. A granite statue honoring war veterans was framed by budding azaleas. Granite benches, dotting the red-bricked walkway, invited walkers to stop and smell the grass. She could imagine how this two-block-long rectangle would look dressed up for a Fourth of July celebration or a strawberry festival, crowded with people and music and food. She could see the appeal of the image. A kinder mode of life—less hurried, less troubled, less complicated.
But here in Summersfield the portrait was a lie. Why would anyone want to pollute their own hometown with the poison of drugs? Was that the reason Felicia had finally agreed to leave Summersfield? To save Hannah from that fate?
With a sigh, Rory parked the stroller in front of the Star Café with its red-and-white checked curtains and carried Hannah inside. This is where Felicia works, she thought as sleigh bells tapped against the glass of the closing door. She took in the long stainless-steel counter along the side, the round white tables in the middle and the booths forming an L along the far edge and the window wall. The place was bustling with activity, especially along the counter. The aroma of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls and coffee sent her stomach gurgling. A harried waitress shouted, “Seat yourself, honey.”
Rory chose a newly vacated booth by the window and Hannah was soon busily reaching for the caddy of sugar packets, the tray of jelly tubs, and the bowl of butter pats wrapped in foil. Clumsily, Rory pushed each out of reach while trying to free the baggie of Cheerios and the purple bear she’d stuffed in the pockets of her jacket.
“Hi, sweetie,” a tired-eyed blonde armed with a coffeepot crooned at Hannah. Hannah’s bright answering smile and babble said this wasn’t a stranger. “Coffee?”
“Please.”
The blonde gave Rory a series of quick looks, as if she wanted to stare but didn’t dare. “You must be Felicia’s sister.” Her voice croaked.
“Rory.”
“Oh, that’s different. What can I get you?” She didn’t offer her name in return, but it was there on the red tag tacked to her white polo shirt. Heidi.
Was Rory imagining the nerves? She glanced at the chalkboard menu on the wall, keeping Heidi in her peripheral vision. She was hungry enough to eat the lumberjack special, but settled for French toast. She could handle that and Hannah at the same time.
“Great,” Heidi said. “I’ll be back with a high chair for Hannah.” She couldn’t seem to get away fast enough. That didn’t bode well for a flowing supply of coffee—or answers.
“Wait!” Rory extended an arm across the table to keep the coffee cup from Hannah’s curious grip. “Have you heard anything from Felicia?”
Clicking her pen like a twitchy rabbit, Heidi stood frozen. She tucked her pad and pen in the pockets of her red apron and cleared her throat. “Not since we last worked a shift together.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Four, five days.”
She knew something. Of that, Rory was sure. Why else would she be so nervous? “I know you’re busy now, but when the rush dies down, could I talk to you for a few minutes?”
Heidi glanced toward the kitchen, then wrenched her lips into a strained smile. “Okay, I guess.”
Heidi was no sooner gone than the bells on the door jingled, and Ace folded his long limbs into her booth. “Crowded,” he said by way of explanation.
He was back to pirate mode this morning. His uniform matched Mike’s—except Ace’s T-shirt was plain white and no sign of tattoos peeked above his collar or beneath his cuffs. Why was it so hot in here all of a sudden? She unzipped Hannah’s jacket and stuffed it in her tote bag, started wriggling out of hers, then changed her mind. Ace had a way of making her feel transparent.
A busty brunette settled a mug of coffee in front of Ace without asking if he wanted any. Must be a regular.
“Hi, there, handsome.” She all but batted her lashes. Disgusting the way some women threw themselves at men.
“Meg.” His smile was one of a man who knew he had the interest of a woman and enjoyed it. Was she part of his job of fitting into town?
“Heidi’ll be right with you.” Meg’s tone suggested she found this personal loss regrettable. Rory couldn’t see the appeal. Why would anyone want someone so hard and unyielding as a partner? Of course, maybe partnership didn’t enter into the equation.
“What are you doing here?” Rory caught the bits of paper Hannah dropped as she ripped a napkin to shreds. “Not checking up on me, I hope.”
He studied the chalkboard menu. “I’m eating breakfast before I go to work. So’s most of this crowd. Ease up on the starch, sweetheart. It’s bad for your arteries.”
“You can’t cook for yourself.” Rory snagged the knife out of Hannah’s reach and distracting her with two more Cheerios.
“I can take care of myself.” He added a container of half and half to his coffee. “Sleep okay?”
“You are checking up on me.”
“It’s my job, remember.” Taking a swallow of coffee, he seemed to take apart her face, recording each tired line, the twin half moons bruising the skin beneath her eyes, the matte sallowness of her skin for a memo regarding her inadequacies.
Why that look managed to both unhinge her and make her feel guilty she had no clue, but she refused to squirm under his scrutiny. Having her here was not his idea, and having to deal with him was not hers. They’d both have to get over it. She beamed her most sugary smile at him. “I can take care of myself.”
“Here you go.” Heidi jammed a wooden high chair at the edge of the table. Then she looked at Ace. “The usual?”
He nodded.
As Rory slipped Hannah into the high chair, she raised a brow in question.
“See and be seen,” he said in a low voice that barely exercised his lips.
“You eat out every day?”
“Most.”
“Part of the job.”
His mouth curved up. “You catch on quick.”
Soon both their orders arrived. Even though Hannah had already had breakfast, she cooed at the sight of the French toast, so Rory cut her a finger-sized slice and let her gum away at it.
Ace dug into his lumberjack special. “What are your plans for today?”
“See and be seen.”
He chuckled. “You’ve already made an impression.”
“On who?” The French toast practically melted in her mouth. Her stomach appreciated that she finally fed it.
“Mike.”
She sniggered. Her opinion of Mike didn’t rank too high. She couldn’t care less what he thought of her.
Ace spread strawberry jelly on his toast. “You should care.”
“What are you?” She pointed a fork at him. “A mind reader?”
“Your every thought is a billboard.”
God, I hope not, she thought, as she concentrated on cutting another finger of French toast for Hannah. The last thing she needed was for him to know how uncomfortable he made her. “Why should I care?”
“Because even though there’s a board of selectmen who runs the town, what Mike wants pretty much goes.” His face was a mask of joviality, and when he spoke, the noise of the diner nearly cloaked his voice.
She cocked her head and tried to read the granite set of his face. “And if I don’t play nice—”
“You don’t get any of your questions answered.”
“Noted.”
He paused over his eggs. “Rory—”
“I’m not stupid.”
“I never said you were. Just determined.”
“I need to find her.”
“I know. But you digging might make things harder for Felicia.”
She stopped her fork midway to her mouth. “What do you mean?”
He handed Hannah the corner of toast she was reaching for. His voice was low, barely above a whisper. “There’s more than Felicia at stake here. Can you understand that?”
She stirred a bite of French toast in the lake of maple syrup at the bottom of her plate and sighed. She could understand how stopping the traffic of drugs was just as important, but it seemed a whole lot less real than Felicia’s disappearance. “Yes.”
“Good girl.”
She shot him a killing look he chose to ignore. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t do everything I can to find her.”
“Couldn’t stop the avalanche if I wanted to. Just don’t go stepping on any toes, okay? Determined could get you killed, and that really wouldn’t look good on my record.”
Of course not. “I’m not a toe-stepper by nature.”
He pushed away his plate. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“Who did Felicia hang out with? Besides Mike.” Rory pushed Cheerios one by one toward Hannah who thought it was hilarious to drop them on the floor.
Ace leaned back in the red vinyl seat and crossed his arms over his chest. “They’re not going to talk to you.”
Rory shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”
“Heidi, Meg and Terra are motorcycle mamas.”
She lifted both her eyebrows. “Motorcycle mamas?”
“They belong to the club.”
“‘Belong’ as in members?”
“‘Belong’ as in belong to every member.”
The French toast that had seemed fluffy moments ago now felt like lead. “Felicia’s a mama?”
He shook his head. “Felicia’s an old lady. She belongs to Mike.”
Rory tried to digest the information, but it only managed to burn into indigestion. “Is Terra a waitress, too?”
“No, she works for the phone company.”
Rory turned her cup of coffee in slow circles, studying the black tide for answers. “Did Felicia have any regular friends?”
“Just Candace and Penny, as far as I know. The only reason I know that much is because she belongs to Mike.”
And he was investigating Mike. Felicia was important to him only because of her relationship to Mike. There was so much, she now realized, she didn’t know about her own sister. She should have… Pursing her lips, she waved the thought away. Making a relationship work took two, and Felicia had made her feelings clear a long time ago.
Ace rose and dropped enough cash on the table to cover both their breakfasts. She started to protest, but he gave her a look so sharp it silenced her. Then his face transformed as he bent toward Hannah and tweaked her nose. He was no longer the hard-edged pirate, but a man a woman could melt for before she realized it had quite happened. Rory rubbed her temple. Ugh, I need to get some sleep.
“Bye, Hannah-banana,” Ace said.
Like every other female in the place, Hannah turned her sweet face up at him and glowed with pleasure. The man could turn heads, but that didn’t mean he knew everything. She would find Felicia and that would put him in his place.
HEIDI AND MEG proved harder to corner than rats in a sewer. Rory had gotten nowhere with Meg, who’d told her to back off and threatened bodily harm when Rory insisted on having a couple of questions answered.
When Rory finally caught up with Heidi outside the café, Heidi promptly pushed herself off the budding oak tree, crushed her cigarette beneath her sneaker and started for the kitchen.
“Wait!” Rory shoved herself, along with Hannah in her stroller, between the waitress and the door. “I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“I don’t know anything, okay?” Heidi fisted her hands and leaned forward as if she would charge to get through Rory.
Rory tried to make eye contact with Heidi with no luck. “You know she’s gone.”
Heidi dropped her head to her chest, sighed, but made no attempt to acknowledge or deny anything.
“Do you know where she is?” Rory pressed.
“No.”
“Take a guess.”
Heidi twirled her disposable lighter in one hand and twisted the end of her blond ponytail with the index finger of her other. “I don’t know.”
“Try. Please. This is important.” Hannah dropped her purple bear and screamed for it. Rory bent down to pick it up and lost her strategic position.
Heidi scooted by her and grabbed the doorknob. “Look, I really don’t know anything.”
Rory handed the bear to Hannah. “Then why are you so nervous?”
Heidi’s gaze dropped to Hannah. “All I know is that she loves that baby. She would never leave her for this long.”
“You think something happened to her.” Rory swallowed hard, hoping to calm the gallop of her pulse.
Heidi shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope not. I just don’t know, okay? I’ve got to go back inside.”
“You were close—”
“Not really.”
Desperately, she reached for Heidi’s arm. “You worked together.”
Heidi yanked her arm free. “That doesn’t mean we were close.”
“You belonged to the same gang.”
“Club. It’s a motorcycle club.” Heidi’s eyes widened like that of a puppy who knew it was in trouble. “I’ll lose my job if I don’t go back in.”
“Who are you afraid of?”
Heidi’s face drooped as she jerked on the handle and the door squeaked open. “Nobody.”
But Heidi said it so softly there was no mistaking the fear warbling beneath her assertion.
And as the door slapped shut, Rory was beginning to think that Ace was right. Finding someone who wasn’t afraid to talk without having to ask Mike for permission might prove tougher than she thought. If the gang was a closed unit, then she had to find a way in.
The roar of a motorcycle caught Rory’s attention. A blur of black-and-chrome sped by. Mike. Rory pushed the stroller toward the sidewalk and reached it in time to see the motorcycle turn onto the road where Mike’s garage was located. Ace worked there.
“I think we’ll take a drive to the grocery store, Hannah.” Rory headed to the lot behind Felicia’s apartment building where she’d parked her rental. “Your mother provided for you, but the fridge is bare. I have a feeling Ace wouldn’t go for junior meat sticks.”
The sinking anchor of defeat weighed her shoulders as she strapped Hannah in the car seat of the rental car. Then Hannah babbled a stream of nonsense at her, and in her niece’s open face, Rory recognized Felicia’s free spirit.
These were singular circumstances. There wasn’t time to braid the usual strands of trust. Finding Felicia had to come before pride.
Turkey, she decided as she started the car, a thick turkey sandwich. By the time Ace finished lunch he’d be sleepy with turkey-induced tryptophan and possibly a tad more malleable.
HERE COMES TROUBLE, Ace thought as he watched Rory approach the shop, pushing Hannah in her stroller. With her dark-red jacket and no-nonsense stride, she reminded him again of a stick of dynamite. Even with her hair tied back into a severe bun, the escaping frizz gave enough hint of the potential energy stored in the compact package to cause a mess he didn’t need.
Operation Hog offered a potentially large return for a small investment of his time. But not if his loyalties ended up split.
She stuck her head through the door, looked around and wrinkled her nose at the smell of gasoline, oil and stale coffee that permeated the area despite the open doors. He tried to see the place through her eyes. The shop was small—about the size of a three-car garage. The walls hadn’t seen white in at least a decade. Classic rock blared from a boom box duct-taped to the wall. Three chassis were up on hydraulic lifts. Tools were spread out over every available surface. Everything appeared messy, and he was sure she was used to neat and organized. She fitted into this arena about as well as a racehorse at a demolition derby.
What ever happened to her I’ll-pretend-you-don’t-exist promise?
Ace wiped his oily hands on a clean rag, then threw it in the open rolling toolbox at this side. She’d probably managed to tick someone off already and needed bailing out. Might as well get this over with.
“Hi, there, Hannah-banana.” Hannah cooed and gurgled a reply. Nine months was a nice age—post complete helplessness, pre talkback. Everything about the world was still enchanting. Ace took hold of the stroller handles and redirected Rory outside. This business was legitimate. Mike didn’t hire gang members to work for him. But that didn’t mean the walls didn’t have ears.
“What’s up?” He fed quarters into the vending machine by the front door outside the office. A bottle of water tumbled out. Then he led her to a picnic table that butted against the brick wall at the back of the ice-cream parlor.
“I, uh, brought you lunch.” She dug into the tapestry tote bag hanging from her shoulder and brought out a thick sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. Who used waxed paper anymore?
“Thanks.” He peeked inside and saw the whole-wheat roll, the half-pound of turkey, lettuce and tomatoes. When was the last time he’d had anything homemade? She wanted something. He wasn’t sure what—only that he wouldn’t like it. “To what do I owe this peace offering?”
“No reason.” She shrugged, and he chuckled at the guilty blush flaming her cheeks. “I thought you might be hungry, that’s all.”
“Have I told you you’re transparent?”
She tucked a stray strand of frizz behind her ear. Not that it did any good. The curl sprang back free, framing her face with copper question marks. “I do believe you’ve mentioned it.”
“So?” He hiked a foot to the picnic table’s bench, then peeled back the wax paper and bit into the sandwich.
Bent over the stroller, she fiddled with Hannah’s purple fleece jacket. “You may be right.”
He cupped a hand to his ear. “I don’t think I heard you. What did you say?”
She righted her spine until it was broom-handle stiff. Her face was set with the cool disapproving lines he imagined she used on too-loud patrons at the library. “I said I think you may be right.”
“No luck, huh?”
Lips compressed into a thin line, she swiveled her head toward the center of town, barely visible between the ice-cream parlor and antique store. “Everyone I’ve talked to is playing mute. The one thing they’re willing to say is that Felicia loves Hannah and that it’s odd she would leave her behind.”
“Unless it was to protect her.”
“Maybe.” She peered at him, and the sad look in her eyes tugged a string he thought he’d cut long ago. He attacked the sandwich with gusto, waiting for her to get to the point.
“I saw pictures of Felicia in an album in her apartment.” Rory toyed with the leather handle of her tapestry tote. “She’s on a motorcycle.”
“Yeah, she rides a Vulcan. Metallic red with flames painted on the gas tank.” And a damn fine job he’d done keeping the thing in tune, considering the girl rode the hell out of the machine.
“She didn’t take Hannah on it, did she?”
Ah, propriety. “No, Mike gave her a big old Chrysler to cart Hannah around.”
Rory’s frown deepened until it formed waves on her forehead. “Where is it?”
Where was she going with this? “Haven’t seen it since she left.”
“What about her motorcycle?”
She handed him a napkin, and he wiped a run of tomato and mayonnaise that was dripping down his wrist. “Her bike’s been up on blocks all winter.”
“Where?”
“In the warehouse.” With his chin he pointed at the beige metal building behind the shop.
“Are you sure?”
“I can check.” He popped the last of the sandwich into his mouth.
“Please.”
He scrunched the wax paper and napkin and lobbed them into the trash can by the ice-cream parlor’s back door. “Rory?”
Looking away, she shrugged. “She loves Hannah. If she was running, she’d take the motorcycle and leave the car for Hannah. Penny doesn’t have a car.”
“Listen.” He angled her toward him and wished to hell he could shake off the odd feeling that was crawling through him like a ghost. “It doesn’t mean anything. I hadn’t gotten around to doing the spring service on her bike yet. With Hannah around, there wasn’t any hurry.”
Rory nodded, but her eyes reflected a gut-wrenching stew of fear and sorrow. A silent oath scraped the back of his throat. He didn’t need this. Reality was that finding Felicia alive wasn’t too likely. Reality was that finding Felicia dead would seal his case—especially if he could tie Mike to her death. But Rory wasn’t ready to hear the possibility of her sister’s demise. Not yet. Not that he blamed her. If it was his sister, he’d hold on to hope. So he gave her a lifeline. “Mike’s hanging by a thread right now. And Felicia’s holding the scissors. If she’s smart, she’s just lying low until they can arrest Mike.”
“What if he hurt her?”
The amber of her eyes swirled with the stress she was working so hard to cap.
“There’s no evidence of foul play.” He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and let his fingers juggle the loose change. “She didn’t strike me as stupid, just confused.”
Rory nodded again and rolled the stroller back and forth. “I’d better get going. I need to do a few more things today.”
“Don’t get yourself into any trouble.”
She barked a dry laugh. “Kind of hard when no one is cooperating.”
Her uppitiness dug into his skin like a swarm of black flies. “Maybe if you stopped looking down your nose at everyone.”
Her chin jacked up. “I’m not looking down on anyone. I’m just asking questions.”
“People usually need a little softening before you crack the whip on them.”
“Ha, now look who’s passing judgment.”
“It’s all a game of appearances, sweetheart.”
She shook her head. The noon sun flamed through her hair, rippling through the question mark curls. “It’s not a game at all.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. The stakes are high, but it’s still a game.”
“What kind of sick game uses people as pawns?”
“Life, sweetheart, life.” He stabbed a hand to the brick wall, effectively caging her between it and his body. His arm hid her outrage at his breach of her personal bubble, but anyone watching would think he’d scored a point. He lowered his head to inches from hers. Her cinnamon scent swirled in eddies toward him, tightening his gut. “Can you act at all?”
“With my transparent face?” she scoffed. But his gaze fixed on the mad beating of pulse at her neck. “Not likely.”
“Well, start practicing, sweetheart.” He kissed her then, hard and fast. Not because he wanted her, but because he was making a point to anyone who cared to watch. Except he’d miscalculated. Touching her was like striking a lit match against a gas-soaked rag. Unexpected heat ripped through him like wildfire, fast and frantic.
Her hands clamped against his wrists and the ridges of her fingertips connected with each beat of his pulse. When was the last time he’d been so aware of anyone? This was all Falconer’s fault for making him responsible for her well-being.
“Don’t do that again.” She speared him with a frosty gaze that contrasted with the heated flush of her cheeks and the molten gold of her eyes. Bedroom eyes. A shiver of anticipation torqued through him. He throttled back a curse. He was used to having women look at him with that kind of heat. This should not rattle him. “Ever.”
She wasn’t his type. He went for tall, uncomplicated women who didn’t care for strings. And Rory came with a whole snarled ball of knotted strings. Way too complicated. But this wasn’t a relationship; it was a necessity if she was to navigate through gang territory without getting lost. Taking responsibility was a character flaw, and Falconer had gone and made him responsible for her hide.
Keeping his hand solidly planted by her head, he down-shifted the rev of his pulse. “What do you know about the way gangs work?”
Her eyes pinched, wary once more. “Not much.”
“It’s a tough world you’re walking into, Rory.” Damn if he didn’t want to taste those lips again, feel that sweet fire stoke him. “It doesn’t work by the rules you were brought up to believe in. The gang’s a man’s world.”
“Then maybe what it needs is a woman to shake things up. Muscle isn’t the only way to get to the heart of something.”
Her tongue darted out, wetting her lips. He swallowed hard.
“Not muscle, sweetheart. Male bonding. That’s something you can’t do. No one’s going to talk to you. Not when they have to answer to Mike.”
She snubbed the truth with a gooselike honk. “But they’ll talk to you. Because you have a penis.”
“You got it.”
She rescued a strand of her hair from beneath his palm, sparking a flash in her golden eyes when finger struck finger. “So you’re saying that to get anywhere, I’m going to have to go through you.”
He jacked one shoulder, slanting closer, though everything in her sent out emergency flares ordering clearance. “Me or another guy. Thing is, you know where I stand. This is a job, nothing else. With them, it’s their life. And like I said, you’re not going to like the way their rules work. A biker chick knows her place. You don’t. Someone’s going to want to teach you a lesson.”
“This is grossly primitive.” A hand fluttered at her neck.
“No, sweetheart. It’s survival. And if you want to get something out of them, you’re going to have to color in the lines they draw.”
Rory was right. She couldn’t act. But maybe that was to both their advantages. “As my old lady, you’re more likely to be tolerated.”
She shrank against the wall as if he’d suggested they get down and dirty right here, right now. “That won’t work. No one would believe I’d choose someone like you.”
“Ouch.” He grinned crookedly and twisted a corkscrew of hair around a finger. “They would if you stopped looking like you’d sucked a lemon when you’re around me. I’m told I’m quite charming.”
“And modest, too.” Her eyes squared in annoyance. “Besides, I’m only here for a week.”
He pushed away from her, giving her breathing space. “They don’t have to know that. Make them think you’re thinking more long-term. Ask about a job at the library.”
She swiveled out of his reach and grabbed the handles of Hannah’s stroller. “What would that gain me?”
“Acceptance.” He tweaked Hannah’s nose. She laughed and made him grin. “And maybe the answers you want.”
Rory shoved at the hopeless mess her bun had become. “So where do these biker people hang out?”
He curled his fingers against the urge to comb through the wild red temptation of Rory’s hair. “You can’t go to a biker bar on your own.”
“Seems like a good place to meet people.” She smiled that saccharine smile he was coming to associate with him losing a round. “I’ll see you at the bar with the half motorcycle sticking out of the building at seven.”
Before he could answer, she strollered Hannah around the building and onto the sidewalk.
She’d maneuvered him into a neat corner. But what the heck? The Hangout was tame enough on Thursday nights. She’d get a taste of the fulfilling life of a biker chick. The chances she’d blow his cover were slim. Maybe an evening out would convince her she wasn’t the right person for the job of finding Felicia. Better she learn with him there to watch over her hide than stir up a bonfire of trouble on her own.
And if the gods were smiling on him, she’d pack up and leave in the morning. He shook his head. “Yeah, right.”
Before he headed back in, he took a detour to the warehouse. Felicia’s Vulcan was still up on its blocks. He tossed off the protective tarp. The red paint gleamed under the fluorescent lights. Clean. Too clean. He checked the tires and found soft earth caught in the treads. Fresh. Why had she taken the bike out and washed it before putting it back on its blocks as if it had been there all winter?
Or maybe someone had done it for her.
He let the tarp fall back into place and headed to the industrial shelving for a case of motor oil to take back to the shop. All around him metal shelves groaned with new and used car and motorcycle parts ready for sale.
How hard was it for someone who owned and operated a garage stocked with used parts to make a car disappear?
Chapter Four
Lunch had gone well, Rory thought as she slipped onto a stool at the bar of The Hangout. With Felicia missing, Rory hated leaving her niece to anyone’s care, but Hannah was comfortable with Penny, and Rory needed to see and be seen—as Ace put it—in places that were not baby-appropriate.
She was pretty sure Ace had agreed to meet her here tonight, but she didn’t see him anywhere. A quick glance at her watch told her she was on time. Of course, no self-respecting biker probably gave a hoot about getting anywhere on time—except maybe to a drug deal. Maybe not even then. Stop it! If she kept this up, she was going to drive herself crazy. Concentrate. She was here to gather information, not wallow in anxiety.
“Want anything, honey?” the bartender with the greasy gray crew cut asked.
“I’m waiting for someone.”
Sitting at a bar wouldn’t normally fall under her choice of entertainment, but she was trying to step into Felicia’s shoes and walk a mile in them. And that mile couldn’t last more than a couple of weeks—less two days already—if she wanted to hang on to her job. That meant bending a few of her iron-clad rules of survival.
She didn’t want to think about what would happen if she didn’t find Felicia in the time she had left.
A clue, Felicia. Just give me a clue and I’ll find you.
Absently, Rory cracked a peanut she’d taken from the bowl on the bar and swiveled to look around the back end of the room for Ace.
The low lighting of the place imbued everyone inside with a soft edge—even the bikers swilling beer. Muted conversations buzzed around her. The barn-plank walls sported black-framed photos of women in various stages of undress, bikers and their motorcycles. Pool balls clinked on a table at the back end of the room. The two men playing there were too scrawny to be Ace. Along the wall, booths with high wooden backs gave a certain privacy to patrons. She didn’t spot Ace there either—with or without a bimbo wrapped around him.
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