The Hot Ladies Murder Club

“What are you so afraid of…besides me?” he whispered.

She gave a little cry and yanked herself loose.

He had the strangest compulsion to reach for her, but he knew that would only scare her more. With a curt nod, he stepped aside.

As if she considered him some sort of devil, she crossed herself and ran.

Campbell sank back into his chair exhausted. He loosened his collar and his bright yellow tie.

When Campbell heard Tom reassuring her outside in the hall, his mood blackened and he swiped his arm across his desk, knocking all the papers and files that dealt with the O’Connor lawsuit onto the floor.

Maybe she was a liar, but the O’Connors had lied to him, too. Clients had a bad habit of telling their lawyers only one side of a story—their side.

He opened a lower desk drawer and took out the bottle of Glenlivet he kept hidden there. Hating himself, he took a quick pull. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He kept seeing that picture of her. She’d been smiling at that kid so sweetly, and he couldn’t forget her thighs.

He’d better forget them. His job was to search and destroy—to expose Mrs. Smith; to do whatever he had to do to hurt her, to win for the O’Connors.

The thought of hurting so much as a single dyed hair on her inky head caused a sick, queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Who the hell was she?

Whoever she was, it was his job to find out and destroy her.

He rapped his fingers on his desk. With some difficulty, he squashed his guilt and dialed Chuck.

The detective picked up on the fourth ring and sounded grumpy and half stoned. “Yeah—”

“How’s it going?” Campbell began, really cringing now at the thought of siccing his old pal, the Charger, on the frightened Mrs. Smith.

Chuck groaned or, rather, bellowed in the middle of a yawn and some other noisy, repulsive body function, “What the hell time is it, anyway?”

“What the hell’s wrong with you? I know not to call you till noon—”

“Ooh…” Chuck paused. “Bad night.” Another groan that pierced Campbell’s eardrum. “Hangover. Vicious little hammers pounding in my brain. Not to mention—”

“What’d you do—”

“Got into a little…er…altercation.…” The Charger let the statement hang.

“You got drunk again and picked a fight—”

“No, man, this bastard insulted my bike. I took serious issue. Nobody says shit like that about the Charger’s bike. The ape was wearing steel-toed boots, and he had more friends than I did. They had chains. Every muscle in my body feels like he kicked it. I’ve gotta black eye that’s as purple as a plum and a tooth that’s hanging by a pink thread.”

“Your big mouth is going to be the end of you yet.” Campbell talked tough, but he felt affection. “Got something I want you to check out. A lady.” He told him everything he knew about Hannah Smith. He finished by saying he’d have Muriel fax key information from her file.

“What’s she done?”

“Just find out who she really is—ASAP. And no rough stuff.”

Chuck was six feet four inches, three hundred pounds of flab and muscle. Just a glance at the Charger, and the average Joe Blow thought—thug, if not worse things. He had massive arms, shoulder-length red hair, a gold loop in his right ear and a beer belly with a death head tattooed on it. He rode a Harley, which was as immaculate as he was unkempt. Not that he was as tough as he looked.

The Charger had strong convictions, which got stronger when he was drunk and forgot he was a coward. He’d been on the wrong side of trouble a time or two. Campbell had bailed him out more times than he could count. Nevertheless, after years of brawling, the Charger had found a niche of sorts. He was a top-notch detective and a whiz on the computer, not that he let on to any of his biker buddies.

“Hannah Smith, huh. Mystery lady? No rough stuff? You got the hots for this mama or something?”

Campbell suppressed a vision of her in the bikini. “Just find out who she is. And don’t let her see you. She’s scared of her own shadow. One whiff of you…and she’d run like a rabbit.”

“You do have the hots.” The Charger laughed.

“Scare the hell out of her if you want to, for all I care!” Campbell slammed the phone down and ordered pizza. He did not give a damn about Mrs. Smith. He didn’t.

Speaking of the hots, Muriel came in and told him Mrs. Crocker had called four more times.

“Call her back. Tell her I’m gone for the day.”

Shuffling through the stacked files on his desk, he saw the name Guy James on one of the labels and remembered he was supposed to make a decision as to whether or not to hire the kid as a law clerk. The kid was taking a year off from law school because his little brother was sick and getting sicker. Guy was raw and young and smart. He’d needed a job so badly he’d really pressed Campbell.

Impressed as Campbell was by the kid, he was in no mood to call him. Later.

Shoving James’s file aside, he eyed the rest of the stacked files and wondered how much he could get done if he worked until midnight. No reason to go home; there was nobody there. He was opening the top folder on his stack when Bob Africa buzzed him.

“I want to know how the deposition went. My office. Ten minutes? Okay?”

Not okay. Campbell hated stacks and wanted to get to work.

“Sure.” Campbell’s low voice was mild, but he spoke through his teeth and slammed the folder shut.

Hell.

Two

When the big metal door clanged shut behind her, Hannah stood in the dark beneath the burned-out light in the shadowy parking garage. For once she didn’t really register she was alone in the kind of place she was terrified of.

No, she was still shaking all over from the intensity of Joe Campbell’s attack, still too upset by the dark fury scrawled on his handsome, piratical face when he’d ripped off her glasses and stared at her with those black, deadly eyes that had stripped her to the bone while he threatened to expose her.

His wife had divorced him. Lucky woman.

Clasping her throat, where a large hand had once pulled red satin ribbons too tight, Hannah shivered, feeling sick to her stomach. Are you somebody else’s woman? Admit it. You’d better admit it because I’ve been watching you. Then the ribbons had squeezed off her breath.

Behind closed doors Mr. Campbell was probably a dangerous, violent and pathetically sick man.

She’d dreamed about this deposition, dreamed about him, had nightmares about him. But he had been worse than her nightmares. Every slick question, every pretty-boy white smile, every sympathetic stare when she’d tried to tell him what had really happened had been meant to trick or entrap her. And the way he’d kept looking at her, and looking through her, had thrown her totally off balance.

Naive fool that she still was, she’d wanted to be honest, but with a predator of his ruthless reputation, she’d known the foolhardiness of that tactic. So—knowing what kind of man he was, suspecting he was even worse in private, she’d deliberately baited him and made him so mad that he really was out to get her now. Why had she done that?

Because his black, deadly eyes had made her feel trapped and scared. She’d felt that if she’d attacked him, maybe he’d let up on her. But, of course his kind never backed off. She should know.

Oh, why hadn’t she just stuck to her plan to be careful and not to say anything that he could use against her?