Loe raamatut: «Just A Little Bit Married?»

One

He dreamed of snow and cold and blood.

Raz was naked when the phone rang that December morning. His covers lay on the floor where he’d kicked them at some point during the restless night. His skin was chilled, clammy, and he told himself that was why he’d dreamed of the cold again.

But he knew better. He knew what the cold meant, and where the blood had come from.

The phone rang again. He groped for it as he sat up. “Rasmussin,” he muttered, reaching automatically for the cigarettes and lighter that should be right beside the phone. Then he remembered. He’d quit. Two months and three days and—he glanced at the clock—seven hours ago, he’d quit smoking. He cursed tiredly.

“Good morning to you, too,” his brother said.

Raz rubbed a hand over his chest, where some of the cold from the dream seemed to be lodged. The warmth from his hand didn’t dispel it. “It’s seven-fifteen,” he said irritably. “You want to know how much sleep I’ve had?”

“Not especially,” Tom said. The slight hiss of static told Raz that Tom was on his cellular phone. “I want you to drag your lazy butt out of bed and listen. Javiero got to one of my witnesses last night. The orderly.”

“Damn.” Raz might not be on the H.P.D. payroll at the moment, but the habit of years was too strong to break. Houston was his city. He kept up with what happened in it, so he knew which case Tom was talking about. Three weeks ago bullets had filled a local emergency room when Javiero and two other members of the Padres “deposed” their current leader. Four people were killed, three others injured.

The press and the public dubbed it the worst outbreak of gang violence yet, perhaps because it happened on supposedly safe territory, away from the Padres’ turf. Because of the uproar, the case had come to Tom in Special Investigations. Tom’s task force had since caught up with the other two gunmen, but Javiero was still loose. “Is the orderly dead?”

“What do you think? Javiero went right to the guy’s home with that Uzi of his. The bullets damn near cut my witness in half. The neighbor who was talking to him when the little bastard opened up is in critical condition.”

“Damn.” Reluctantly Raz faced the fact that he was wide awake at seven-fifteen in the morning and there were no cigarettes in the apartment. For the thousandth time he wondered why he’d picked this time to quit. “You have other witnesses.”

“One of them suffered a severe loss of memory after he heard about the shooting last night.”

“And the other?”

“She’s sticking.” There was satisfaction in Tom’s voice. “Even though she’s scared spitless, and with reason. I don’t have the manpower to get her the kind of round-the-clock protection she needs until we catch up with Javiero.”

An alarm went off in Raz’s mind. “Tom, I don’t—”

“I’ve persuaded her to hire a bodyguard. She’s a doctor, so she can afford it.”

“Fine. Great. Have you suggested North’s agency? They’re reliable.”

“You claim you want to go private. Of course, we both know that’s just an excuse to sit around in your underwear and watch your toenails grow. How many jobs have you turned down this month?”

Three. “I’ve been looking.”

“How many have you turned down?”

“None of your goddamn business.”

Silence from the other end, except for the muted sounds of traffic that indicated Tom was in his car.

“Look,” Raz said, rubbing a hand over his face. Several days’ worth of stubble rasped his palm. “I guess you mean well, but I don’t need my big brother to ride in and save me from myself. I can find my own job.” When he had to. When the right job turned up. He still had some money saved up, after all. There was no rush.

Tom snorted. “You really believe I’m thinking of you here? I don’t risk my witnesses for you or anyone else. I need a guard for her. I want you to do it. When you’re not busy feeling sorry for yourself, you’re almost as good as you think you are.”

“Private security companies—”

“They aren’t good enough. Not for this.”

Raz’s eyebrows went up. Could his by-the-book brother actually have allowed himself to get personally involved in a case? Not with the witness, of course. Tom was too honorable to cheat on his wife. Besides, he was head-over-heels in love with her.

“I want you for it,” Tom said flatly. “Jacy got a threatening note from Javiero. yesterday. Apparently he doesn’t like the coverage she’s been giving his story.”

Oh, sweet Jesus. “She’s all right? And the baby?”

“Both of them are fine. She says I’m overreacting. A dozen other journalists, both print and TV, got similar messages yesterday. Even a nutcase like Javiero can’t go around killing them all, not when he’s trying to hide out.”

“It may be more of a power trip than a real threat.”

“Has your brain rotted out completely in the last couple months? I take a death threat from a man who’s killed at least five people pretty seriously.”

Raz bit back his too-ready anger. Tom was entitled to be touchy under the circumstances. “Javiero is scum, but he’s not stupid scum. By now he knows he’s going down. He just wants to make it happen his way. Sending death threats to journalists gets him more press, more attention.”

“If he really believed he was going down he wouldn’t be offing witnesses.”

Raz grimaced. Tom was one hell of a cop. The best. But he didn’t understand Javiero. Raz did. He’d lived with people like that for years. Hell, he’d been someone like that, in one of his alter egos. “One thing you have to understand about Javiero. Death and prison don’t worry him much, but pride, name, reputation—they mean everything. If he makes a big enough splash, takes enough people with him when he goes down, it makes him more real.”

“Maybe,” Tom said. “Maybe that is his motive right now—attention. He probably doesn’t realize Jacy is my wife. She still uses her maiden name professionally. But once he finds out—if he finds out—his attitude is apt to change.”

Raz’s knuckles went white on the receiver. Tom was right. If Javiero found out that one of the reporters he’d threatened was the wife of the cop who was pursuing him, it might make an attack on her irresistible.

With Jacy in danger, Raz had no choice. He had to do whatever he could, even if that meant being responsible for this witness’s life.

Even though the witness was a woman.

He took a deep breath and fought back the panic churning in his stomach. “What do you want me to do?”

“Take care of my witness. Keep her alive until we find Javiero and lock him up. I don’t want that son of a bitch walking when this goes to trial.”

“One witness’s testimony is no guarantee of a conviction.” Eyewitnesses were, in fact, notoriously unreliable.

“We’ve got physical and circumstantial evidence, too, but I need her. Juries don’t always trust a lab tech’s report, and this woman makes a hell of a good witness.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She’s a doctor, a trauma specialist, though she doesn’t look it. I doubt she’s more than an inch over five foot, and—”

Raz interrupted impatiently. “I didn’t ask for a physical description. What is she like?”

“Quiet Intense. Easy to underestimate. She’s got one hell of a memory for faces, fortunately, and when she’s sure of her facts she can’t be budged. She’s sure it was Javiero she saw that night. She recognized him.”

“How did she know him?”

“She volunteers at the free clinic on Burroughs twice a month. It seems he took his sister there a couple times.”

“Sounds like a real saint.”

“Just make sure she doesn’t get changed from a saint into a martyr.”

Raz promised. What else could he do? He knew what Tom was asking, knew why he was asking. Houston had several top-notch security agencies that could offer excellent round-the-clock protection, but professionals, however competent, weren’t enough. Not when Jacy’s life might be in danger.

Tom offered to call Raz’s boss and get the paperwork started that would grant him official permission to work a civilian job while still technically on the force.

“I could just quit,” Raz said.

“Not necessary,” Tom said, as Raz had known he would, adding, “I’ll be there to pick you up in ten minutes.”

“Pretty sure of me, weren’t you?” The hand that held the phone was starting to shake—a fine tremor, nothing obvious.

“Yes,” Tom said quietly. “I’m sure of you.”

More the fool you, Raz thought. He said goodbye and put the phone down. Then he waited for the shakes to pass.

Tom didn’t understand what he was asking, not really. There was a hell of a lot Tom didn’t know. But Raz understood what Tom wanted. He wanted someone who would keep his witness alive, no matter what.

Raz headed for the shower, wondering if Tom realized just how far his little brother would go to protect his family. Could a man as honest as Tom, a cop that straight arrow, imagine what Raz was really like after eight years of undercover work?

God, he hoped not.

The drumming of hot water on his back and head felt good, though it didn’t banish the exhaustion that clung to him like a second skin. He didn’t really notice, though. He’d been tired too long.

When he came out of the shower he flicked the radio on. A disc jockey announced there were only thirteen shopping days left until Christmas.

Raz stopped in his tracks, naked and dripping. Thirteen days? Only thirteen days until Christmas? Disbelieving, he looked out the window of his second-story apartment. A sunny South Texas sky promised another warm day.

He had vaguely noticed holiday decorations going up, but people put those up earlier every year. He hadn’t paid attention to them. He hadn’t wanted to see them at all. But surely they hadn’t been up very long ... had they?

The disk jockey’s patter gave way to Bing Crosby singing about a white Christmas. Raz thought about the snow in his dream, shivered, and shut the radio off.

So Christmas was less than two weeks away. Christmas, the time of hope and miracles...and everything else Raz couldn’t believe in anymore. But he did believe in family. If he had to lie, steal, kill or die to protect his family, that’s what he’d do.

Though it was December, the air was barely cool that morning as a swimmer stroked up and down an outdoor pool in a Houston neighborhood filled with old houses and new money.

The sun had been up for twenty minutes when Sara Grace finished her first lap. The water was cooler than the air, almost chilly. It flowed like liquid silk over her skin. Sara loved the feel of it as much as she liked the pull and warmth of her muscles as she stroked and kicked. Water was innately sensual. Here, for a little while, she could feel sensual, too. Here she was lithe and graceful and quite unlike her usual self.

As she slid through the water she let her mind slide into a daydream. It was better than thinking about what bullets, fired at a rate of 950 rounds per minute, could do to a human body. Like hers.

Sara had never had much time for daydreaming, so she wasn’t very good at it. She vaguely imagined the feel of strong, male arms around her. The look of a man’s hard, muscular body. A teasing flash of a smile. The combination brought a little tingle of excitement to her own body.

When she reached the south end of the pool she paused long enough to assure herself that the police officer still stood by the gate, watching over her. Then she flipped around and started back.

What had happened to the poor orderly last night had left her terrified. No surprise there. Sara knew she was a coward. But, being an experienced coward, she knew how to banish her fears, at least temporarily. Fear was an ice demon, tight and rigid. It had a hard time holding on to a body warm and loose from exercise. By the time she reached the other end of the pool she made her turn automatically, her mind drifting back to the man she’d been fantasizing about, a man she’d stitched up six months ago.

She’d been on her third night in a new job in a new city when he’d shown up at the ER. Sara remembered the number of stitches she’d put in the gash in the man’s forearm, and she remembered the way his chest had looked—hard, with a dusting of soft brown hair in the center.

Once again she felt that pleasant little tingle of heat.

Her recently developed fantasy life was strangely soothing, rather like having a secret place to go when life became too large and scary. A bit childish, maybe, she thought, but it hurt no one. She did feel slightly guilty for drawing on her memory of a patient’s anatomy for her daydreams. But he’d only been her patient for a couple of hours, after all. She’d never see him again.

Sara stroked smoothly down the length of the pool and thought about the man she would never see again. A dangerously attractive man—sexy, charming—oh, yes, he’d been all of that and more. More, as in possibly wanted by the police. He’d claimed the cut on his arm was an accident, but Sara knew a knife wound when she sewed one up. She’d reported it, of course. He’d sneaked out of the examining room before the officer came to get his statement.

Sara was nearly at the south end of the pool again when a man’s voice interrupted her daydream. “Dr. Grace?”

Shock and fear jolted through her. Her head went up. Her hand, outstretched at the end of a stroke and ready to grab the side of the pool, froze. In that split second she saw not one, but two men. The detective she’d spoken with so often since the shooting knelt by the edge of the pool, his face shadowed by his black Stetson.

Behind him stood the man of her dreams.

Sara nearly drowned.

After several embarrassing seconds of splashing around like a two-year-old in a wading pool, she managed to grab the edge of the pool. She drew herself up with as much dignity as she could. “Yes?”

“Sorry,” Lieutenant Rasmussin said in the Texas drawl Sara had almost gotten used to hearing in the past six months. He was a hard-looking man with a thick mustache and odd, pale eyes. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I brought someone I’d like you to meet.”

Her eyes flicked to the man behind him.

He reminded Sara of a young Harrison Ford, cocky and entirely too charming, his face intriguingly creased when he smiled. His jeans were faded almost to white. His T-shirt was a truly ugly shade of purple, covering a chest that surely couldn’t be the peak of masculine perfection she remembered.

The crooked grin he flashed at her was the same, though. And, oh, heavens, she felt the same little sizzle of heat. Except it wasn’t that little.

She cleared her throat. “We’ve met.”

One of his eyebrows went up quizzically. “We have?”

It was absurd to feel disappointed. She wasn’t a woman who made a lasting impression. And surely she hadn’t wanted a man like him to be the exception? “I sewed up your arm a few months ago, Mr. MacReady.”

His lips twitched. “Uh-oh.” He glanced at the other man. “You were right about her memory for faces. She, uh, knows me as Eddie MacReady.”

Lieutenant Rasmussin’s expression barely changed, yet he managed to look disgusted. “You might have said something.”

“I didn’t know who your witness was. You’ve kept their names from the press, though God alone knows how.”

“Apparently it didn’t do much good, since Javiero found the other one.” Tom Rasmussin sighed and stood. “Explanations are obviously in order. Dr. Grace, this reprobate is my brother, also known as Sergeant Ferdinand Rasmussin of the Houston Police Department Also known by various other names, including Eddie MacReady. He works undercover and he has a sick sense of humor. Raz, meet Dr. Sara Grace.”

She stared at the reprobate. He was a police officer? Now that she looked closely, she saw differences between her memory of him and the way he looked today. His clothes were vastly different, of course. This man’s hair was shorter and lacked the blond highlights she remembered. And his eyes. There was something different about his eyes, but she couldn’t pin down what it was.

He smiled at her, a smile as slow and as sweet as the chocolate-candy color of those eyes. “Call me Raz,” he said, looking almost bashful, as if he should have a hat to doff and boots to scuff in the dirt. “Glad to meet you under my right name this time, ma’am.”

Detective Rasmussin scowled at his brother. “Stop playing around, Raz.”

He shrugged. “I’ve got to do something to counter the impression she has of me. Eddie’s not a very nice boy.”

Sara was confused. On several levels. “You, ah, you want your brother to take over for the other officer?” she asked the detective. “You’re assigning him to stay with me until I get a bodyguard?”

“Not exactly. Raz is on leave from the force right now. Do you want to get out and dry off, Dr. Grace, before I explain?”

Get out—in front of these two men—in her swimsuit?

Sara’s face heated. Nerves fluttered in her stomach, and her throat closed. The rising tide of symptoms was only too familiar, but no easier to combat because of it. She reminded herself that her swimsuit was a conservative one-piece. And these men didn’t care what she looked like. They wouldn’t be checking out her body for flaws. Besides, she’d look more ridiculous if she stayed in the pool.

But real shyness couldn’t be reasoned away. She was barely able to stammer, “I’ll, uh—my towel. It’s—if you’d just—”

The wrong man figured out what her fractured request meant. The one she thought of as Eddie MacReady turned and grabbed her towel from the webbed chair where she’d left it. He crouched near the edge of the pool.

“Here.” He smiled as he held out the towel.

This was awful. He was so close, and looking right at her. Sara shut her eyes and heaved herself up and out. She sat on the edge of the pool and twisted to take the towel from him, eager to get it wrapped safely around herself. Her fingers trembled slightly when they brushed his.

Heat. Quick. Purifying. It zipped through her in a sudden rush. Just that fast, her shakes and sick nerves were gone, washed out by something stronger. Her hand clenched the towel. She stared at him, astonished.

His eyes were wide and startled and, for a split second, completely unguarded.

“Do you want to go in?” Lieutenant Rasmussin said.

His voice brought Sara back to reality. Partway back, at least, enough to realize she still sat there in her skin-hugging swimsuit. She blushed and hastily wrapped the thick terry towel around her. “Yes,” she said, and pushed to her feet. “I’ll fix coffee.”

Now, of course, he would see what had been hidden by the water. But while Sara was painfully self-conscious about some things, she had her pride. She was proud of the fact that she walked at all, and damned if she would be ashamed of the scars.

Her back was straight even if her gait couldn’t be when she limped to the chair where she’d left her cane. She started for her cottage then, and she didn’t look back.