Cold Target Page 9

  Then reality struck again. Would they do that if they knew she was a murderess?

  She and her son were here on borrowed time. Was it possible for either of them to have friends … to have any sort of normal life? Was tonight a mistake?

  Looking at her son and hearing his laughter as he played chase with the dogs and another small boy, her heart warmed. He needed this. He didn’t need expensive day schools and formal clothes and a demanding father. He needed play and fun and friends and warmth.

  He took that moment to give her a wide grin of sheer delight.

  Her heart broke. For him. For her.

  “Elizabeth?”

  She heard the name but for a moment it didn’t register. She turned back to Russ and saw his puzzled look. “I’m sorry. Everyone calls me Liz.”

  “Liz then,” he said easily.

  The hamburgers were ready. Marty insisted she and Harry go to the head of the line. “The cooks are always first. That’s the only way we can get them.”

  Holly fixed a plate for both Harry and herself, then searched for a place to sit. The one table on the front porch was already filled with people talking to one another. She found a step, happy to be alone with Harry for a few minutes. Others also found steps or a swing on the porch. Marty came over. “There’s room at the table.”

  Holly smiled and shook her head. “We’re settled now. Thank you.”

  Marty gave her an understanding look, then retreated.

  Holly was grateful. No more questions this way. She was happy to be with her son, to know that he was safe.

  The hamburger was delicious, far more delicious than a steak at one of the famous New Orleans restaurants she’d frequented with Randolph. Perhaps the flavor came from the mesquite wood or the smoke rising up into a clear night, or the unconstrained laughter or the dogs chasing one another around. She did not have to worry about saying something that her husband would dislike and let her know about later.

  The hamburger suddenly lost its taste. She placed the remainder on the plate and looked at the others. Laughing. Talking easily. She was the outsider, would always have to be the outsider. How she longed to be one of them.

  A car parked at the road in front of the steps—a sheriff’s car. Her heart stopped as a uniformed officer stepped out.

  She wanted to run, or hide.

  The officer was alone. Tall with a solid teddy bear build. Black hair. Dark brown eyes. Certainly part, if not all, Hispanic and about the same age as Russ the rancher.

  Marty went down to meet him, and they both climbed the steps to where she sat. Terror spiked in her chest. She tried not to let it show.

  But there was no sternness in his eyes. Instead he knelt in front of Harry. “Hi, young man,” he said.

  Harry looked at her, then back. “’Ello,” he said noncommittally.

  Marty broke in. “Liz, this is Sheriff Doug Menelo. Doug, Liz Baker.”

  “Marty showed me your sculpture of a frog,” he said. “My niece fell in love with it.”

  Niece. Not daughter. Or wife. Evidently Marty had dragged out every single man in Bisbee to meet her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Thank you. It solved my birthday present problem.” His smile crinkled his face, especially around the eyes. If it hadn’t been for the uniform, she would have been charmed.

  She stood. “Which reminds me, I should get home. Marty has ordered more.”

  “Indeed I have, but all work and no play—”

  “Work satisfies me,” Holly broke in. “And it’s getting to be Harry’s bedtime.”

  “Did you drive?” Sheriff Menelo said.

  “I walked.”

  “That’s a fair distance,” he said. “Can I drive you both home?”

  How did he know where she lived? Or did everyone know that a widow and her son had moved into town?

  She wanted to take Harry and flee. Yet then she might not be able to sell her sculptures, and money was imperative. Her little creatures were one of the few things she could do to raise money without needing a Social Security card. She had been waiting daily for the birth certificate to arrive in the mail. Until she had that, she couldn’t apply for a Social Security card.

  And Caesar? It wouldn’t be easy to find another place that would take pets. She could never take the dog away from her son. Not after seeing the pure joy on his face whenever they were together.

  But now she had caught the attention of someone in the sheriff’s department. What if photos of her or Harry were circulated to various law enforcement agencies?

  “Thank you,” she said again, “but we need the exercise. And it feels safe here.”

  “It is for the most part,” he said. “I’ll leave you then to finish. If you change your mind …” He gave her another warm smile, then took a plate and filled it with food before sitting in a chair just vacated by someone else.

  Ride in a police car? The very thought made her tremble. She hoped he didn’t notice her shaking hands. She looked down at Harry’s plate. The hamburger was gone. So were the pepper-flavored beans and spicy cole slaw.

  Harry’s attention was focused on several cakes sitting on the serving table.

  She was not going to get away until he had a piece.

  She only wished her gaze didn’t continue to go toward Sheriff Menelo as someone picked up a guitar, sat on a rock and started strumming.

  Harry went to get a piece of cake and returned. Night had settled around them and the sky filled with a million stars, far more than she’d ever seen in New Orleans. The plaintive Mexican music made her ache with loneliness. There was no one she could trust. There might never be again.

  NEW ORLEANS

  Gage didn’t give a damn what Meredith Rawson wanted. He sat in his car in the parking lot until he saw her leave. Then he followed.

  He was not going to let her go into her house alone, not after what had happened earlier.

  He wondered whether he had been partly responsible. Could it have been Rick Fuller? Had his intervention turned Fuller’s anger in another direction? If it had, Gage would see the man buried under the jail, regardless of any support he had in the department. Too often it had turned a deaf ear to spousal abuse.

  After seeing that Meredith Rawson was safe, he planned an interview with Fuller.

  He kept her car in sight as she drove home, and parked down the street when she turned into a driveway sheltered by giant oaks. He quickly got out of his car and reached her side as she opened the front door.

  She gave him a hostile look. “You weren’t invited.”

  “I invited myself.”

  “That’s arrogant.”

  “I’ve been told that before.”

  “I bet you have.”

  “Do I detect petulance?”

  “It’s daylight, Detective. Detective Morris had an alarm system installed this morning.” She looked down at the paper in her hand and darted inside, punching numbers in a new alarm detection box.

  He looked at it. “Good choice.”

  She turned and glared at him. “Are you satisfied now?”

  “Nope.” He went inside and looked around. It was as bad as he’d ever seen a home ransacked. “Wow,” he said.

  “An elegant observation,” she said.

  He was going to retort but saw her slump against a wall. She looked vulnerable and tired.

  “Hey, did you get any sleep?”

  “Would you have?”

  “No. I think you’re gutsy as hell for doing as well as you have.”

  She looked at him then, and he saw tears in her eyes, saw the way she was trying to hold them back.

  “I’m just so … angry,” she said.

  He didn’t intend to do it, but his hand cupped her shoulder, and then somehow she was in his arms.

  He held her for a moment, his arms tightening around her as he felt her body shake. “It’s okay,” he said. “Just let it go.”

  “I don’t want to,” she said. Her tone had the s
ound of a small child protesting an adult’s demand. Well, she was entitled.

  Regardless of the circumstances, she felt damned good in his arms. She had the slightest scent of lilacs. Her short hair was silky and her body was rounded in just the right places. Yet despite the momentary weakness, he sensed her spine of steel. Sensed, hell. He felt it.

  Just as he felt the heat rise between them. The air in the small space separating them crackled, threatening to ignite. His right hand moved to her left arm, his fingers running up and down in slow, caressing trails.

  He’d always recognized the attraction between them, had thought it might be the attraction of opposites—he the product of a New Orleans slum and she the product of New Orleans society. There had been a wall between prosecutor and street cop as well. While they were not exactly enemies, the success of the prosecutor depended on the competence of the cop, and vice versa. Too many times, their respective translations of procedure were at odds.

  None of that mattered at the moment. He had a need to comfort, but he had another need as well.

  He bent down, his lips barely skimming hers, but that fleeting touch was enough to ignite the sparks. Warmth spread throughout his body, then centered in his groin.

  He hadn’t known what to expect. Maybe ice that would cool the damned heat burning him inside out.

  But there was no ice. Instead she stood on tiptoes, offering her lips to him.

  As he deepened the kiss, he tightened his arms around her. The storm gathering around them became explosive, filled with hot expectancy. Her lips yielded, yet it was not a surrender. More, he supposed, like astonishment and curiosity at the currents that raged between them.

  Like his own feelings. How long had it been since he’d felt this alive?

  Her mouth opened hesitantly under his, greeting him with an unexpected need that he felt straight through to his core. Trapped by the range of emotions, he looked in her eyes. The blue he always thought so cool was now more like the color in the heart of a flame.

  The kiss took on a wild, fierce quality given and reciprocated, blocking out the world around them.

  The blaze ignited deep within him and spread. He knew she felt it too as she pressed closer to him, clinging to him with a need that equaled his own.

  He knew how unwise this was. Her life had been jeopardized, her mother was near death, and her private world had been tossed. Desperation born of fear was part of her response. But that was the logical, civilized part of him speaking.

  He had no interest in being a gentleman at the moment.

  His hand automatically reached for the top button of her shirt as his mouth moved from her lips and up the side of her face. He tasted salt and felt moisture. Reluctantly, he raised his head. One tear, then another, wandered forlornly down her face.

  He may not be a gentleman, but neither was he a cad.

  She was too vulnerable now. Much too vulnerable. Too much had happened too fast, and he knew the drugging effect of one disaster after another.

  He also knew she hated those tears.

  He gently kissed them away, hesitated for the slightest fraction of a second, then stepped back, ignoring—or trying to—the urgent condition of his body.

  The cool and controlled Ms. Rawson looked thoroughly bewildered.

  Well, he was damnably bewildered himself.

  He reached out and touched her face, brushing away the last of the visible tears. He thought about making a wisecrack about never having made a woman burst into tears before, but he knew it would fall flat.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why not?” she said, surprising him. “I think I needed that. It reminded me how … interesting it is to be alive.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Interesting? I think that might be an insult.”

  She had the grace to look embarrassed. She had obviously sought a noncommittal word. “No insult intended,” she finally said. “It was … very nice.”

  “Nice? We’re going from insult to injury.”

  She had to smile. “What about mind-boggling?”

  “Better,” he conceded.

  She studied him for a moment. “You’re trying to distract me. You’re a kind man, Detective.”

  He chuckled at that. “That’s a rare observation, and I’m no such thing. I didn’t want to stop.”

  “But you did.”

  “To my regret.”

  “Why don’t I believe that?”

  “Believe it, lady.”

  She stared at him for a long time with those blue eyes, and he wondered how he had ever thought them cold. “Thank you.”

  He decided right then he had to keep away from her. There was something about this woman. An honesty he liked. A passion he liked even more.

  He dropped his hand from her face, which he’d continued to caress. To comfort, he realized. He couldn’t remember when last he had done that with a woman. When last he’d wanted to.

  An agonizing loneliness coursed through him.

  He turned and purposely looked at the disaster that had once been the very nice interior of a very nice home. The type of home that was beyond his means.

  He tried to think of that rather than of the ache deep inside him.

  Meredith Rawson was as far beyond him and his world as a star in the sky. He would hurt both of them if he allowed himself any involvement.

  “Let me help you clean up,” he said, hoping that physical exertion would quiet the need raging in him and satisfy his sudden need to protect her.

  “You’ve done enough,” she said in a voice just a little ragged. “Thank you.”

  “You can’t get rid of me that fast.”

  “I think it’s a good idea.”

  “Do you now?”

  Their voices were low, almost like those of lovers exchanging secrets. It was all he could do to keep from moving closer to her. From her eyes and body language, he suspected it was all she could do not to take a step forward.

  He didn’t want to leave her alone. Not here. Not after all she’d been through in the past few days. He’d seldom seen such wanton destruction and he wondered whether the rest of the house was like this. There was a twisted maliciousness in it.

  But someone had obviously tried to kill her last night. There was nothing more malicious than that.

  “Did Morris offer you protection?”

  “I doubt whether New Orleans’s finest has time to protect everyone whose home has been burglarized.”

  “This is more than that. You know that. Not to mention the fact that someone tried to run you down last night. You’re a former prosecutor. That could be the reason.”

  Their gazes clung. He wondered whether his voice was as sensuous as hers sounded to him. They were courting in every word, every inflection.

  Courting? Such an old-fashioned word. Yet it fit in some strange way.

  Stop! End it now.

  He didn’t know if he could. He didn’t know whether he ever could in her presence. They were like dynamite and fire together. He’d suspected as much before, which was why he’d been defensive with her.

  She pulled away this time, stepping back and looking at the room again.

  “Let’s clean it up,” he said.

  “You don’t have—”

  “Do you have a weapon?” he interrupted.

  “No, but I have a permit. It’s on my agenda after finding a cleaning service.”

  “Know how to use one?”

  “Cleaning service?” she asked with a weak grin.

  He frowned at her feeble attempt at humor.

  “I trained at the police academy after receiving some threats as a prosecutor,” she added after a moment’s silence.

  “When is the last time you practiced?”

  “Three years ago.”

  “Time for a refresher course.”

  “I realize that. I’ll do it soon.”

  “Very soon,” he emphasized, then changed direction. “You’re no
t planning to stay here alone tonight, are you? Or am I taking something for granted?”

  “That I live alone?”

  “Yes.” He wanted to bite back the word, eradicate the sudden jealousy that rose up.

  “I do. Except I might be getting a very large dog.”

  “I have one of those. I would certainly suggest a gun as well.”

  She stared at him. “You have a dog?”

  “That’s so surprising?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never given it much thought.”

  He grinned at that. “Touché.” Then he looked at the room. “Call the cleaning service. Then we can see about a gun and start cleaning up.”

  “Do I have any choice in this?” A chill had crept into her voice.

  “No,” he said.

  She stared at him for a moment. “I let someone rule my life for more years than I want to remember. I won’t do it again. Thank you for bringing me home, but I really need some time alone.”

  The tears were gone. Pure determination and defiance were in her eyes, in her voice. All the passion he’d felt in her moments ago was now rallied in defense of her independence.

  It was a dismissal. Royally made.

  Well, he’d known better. He should have followed all his instincts and left her alone.

  He nodded. “All right. Good day, Ms. Rawson.”

  She bit her lip, an oddly vulnerable expression.

  He opened the door and left. He strode to his car and got inside. He didn’t start the engine.

  He was angry. Angry at himself for not knowing better. For letting his libido get out of control. For trying to comfort someone who didn’t want comforting. He’d known she was poison for someone like him.

  Hell, he was just plain angry.

  But damned if he was going to leave. Someone had wanted to hurt her. Someone who did that kind of damage wasn’t going to quit.

  Dammit. He couldn’t follow her forever. Why hadn’t Cliff Morris provided some kind of protection?

  Hell, he would call Morris and make sure she had it. It just wouldn’t be him.

  He tried to tell himself his only interest in the Rawsons—father and daughter—was the Prescott case, the case that could repair his career in a department that still didn’t quite trust him.

  That was his interest.

  He kept telling himself that.