Strangers in the Night

Ross barely heard the bartender over the raucous noise filling the bar, but he got the message loud and clear. He bit back a curse. He couldn’t afford to indulge the instinct, couldn’t risk offending the bartender when the man held information he needed. It wasn’t the man’s fault that he didn’t have the answer Ross wanted to hear. That didn’t make it any easier to take.

He had to wait to question the man further. The bartender turned away to refill the glass of a man at the other end of the bar. The small neighborhood pub was surprisingly crowded for a Tuesday night. The bartender and a single waitress were the only ones working. Ross was lucky to get the man’s attention at all, especially since he wasn’t drinking.

Impatience gnawed at him all the same. It rankled that he’d managed to track Taylor down to this bar, only to miss him by ten minutes.

It had been far easier to find Taylor than he’d expected, so much so the situation made Ross a little uneasy. For someone on the run, Taylor hadn’t done a very good job covering his tracks as he’d cut an uneven path from New York to Chicago. Despite the head start the man had on him, it had only taken Ross a few days to catch up.

The bartender finally swung back in his direction. Ross motioned him over. “How long was this guy in here?” he asked, tapping the photo of Taylor he’d placed on the bar.

The bartender heaved a sigh that sent his belly quaking and considered the question. “Three hours or so. Sat at the table by the window there. Had four beers.”

“Was he alone?”

“Yep. Just sat there. Didn’t talk much. Kept his eyes on that window.”

“He leave alone?”

“I didn’t see him leave. One minute he was there, and the next, when I turned around, he was gone.”

The bartender was eyeing his patrons down the length of the bar, and Ross knew he was about to lose him. Figuring he’d gotten all he was going to out of the man, he pulled a bill out of his wallet and placed it on the counter. The bartender accepted it without a word. Ross moved away from the bar and headed for the door.

Outside, he glanced in both directions down the street, trying to gauge which way Taylor might have gone. There was no one in sight. To the left were a couple of businesses, their windows shuttered, the lights dimmed. There was a laundromat, a drugstore. Nothing he could imagine Taylor being interested in.

To the right lay houses and apartment buildings, what was mainly a residential area. The windows were mostly dark, their inhabitants safe in their beds for the night.

The bartender’s comment that Taylor had stared through a window for hours bothered him. Instead of choosing a more discreet position in the back of the bar where it was unlikely anyone would see him, he’d chosen a seat right in front of the window. Either he really wasn’t worried about being spotted—and Ross knew Taylor was too savvy to be so careless—or he was looking for someone. Undoubtedly the same someone he’d come all this way to find.

At this time of night Ross was inclined to believe someone would be heading home, instead of to any of the closed businesses to his left. He headed right.

Thunder rumbled overhead. Ross flipped up the collar on his leather jacket, but didn’t try to seek cover. He moved quickly. There was the possibility that Taylor had driven off, having completed whatever business had brought him here. Ross refused to consider that yet. He wouldn’t accept that he’d been this close only to lose the man again. He had to be somewhere nearby.

Distracted by his thoughts, Ross heard the running footsteps a heartbeat too late. He took an instinctive step back, but not quickly enough to avoid the person who barreled straight into him from out of nowhere.

Too slow, man.

His hands automatically went up to steady the person. One touch, and he knew it was a woman.

Then she threw her head up, a curtain of ebony hair flying back from her face. The lights were behind him, cutting through the gloom, offering him a clear view of her expression.

Huge, frightened eyes blinked up at him. Sure she was about to bolt, he tightened his hold on her arms.

He quickly took stock of the situation, spotting the alley she’d come out of, the opening so tucked away in the shadows he never would have noticed it.

He could feel her pulse beneath his thumbs, the double-time throb of her heart beneath the thin layers of her clothing. Combined with the look of shock in her eyes, it was obvious she was terrified. Of him?

When she said nothing, he shook her gently. “Lady, are you all right?”

It took a second. Some of the fear in her eyes faded, replaced by confusion. She blinked and shook her head as though trying to clear it. He wondered if she was on drugs, only to dismiss the idea a moment later. Her eyes were clear and unerringly focused on his face. Her gaze was probing, searching his features for something, some semblance of familiarity, he supposed. She wouldn’t find any. He never forgot a face, and he knew they’d never met.

“You’re not one of them,” she murmured, the words little more than a whisper carried on the wind. Still, there was something about her voice…

“One of who?” He regretted asking as soon as the words were out. Whatever this woman was into, he wasn’t interested. He had problems enough of his own without worrying about someone else’s. He needed to extricate himself from her situation, not dig in deeper. With each passing second, Taylor was getting that much farther away.

Before she could answer, the sounds of footsteps pounding down the alley she’d just emerged from reached them. No doubt whoever she was running from coming after her.

They both glanced toward the sound. She whipped her head back to face him a split second later. Steely determination had replaced the fear in her eyes, the transformation so complete she seemed to have become an entirely different person. He stared stupidly at the new stranger she’d become.

“Help me,” she said, her voice as forceful as her expression. “Don’t let him find me.”

She’d managed to surprise him for the second time in half as many seconds. Not because of her demand or the sudden strength of her voice. No, it was her accent, now unmistakable and wholly out of place in this Midwestern city.

She was from New York.

She didn’t give him a chance to process that simple fact. With one more glance over her shoulder, she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him flat against her. At the same time, she twisted, throwing them both back into a small recess in the wall, so that he was pinning her against it.

He understood immediately. Anyone who came out of that alley would likely pass by without even knowing they were there.

And if he did…

Her hands wound themselves into his hair, pulling his head close. For a moment, he was sure she was going to kiss him. It was the oldest trick in the book: pretend to be lovers to mislead anyone who was looking for one person, not two. He was almost disappointed she would resort to it.

The rest of him waited for it, remembering just how long it had been since he’d had a woman. His self-imposed solitude had had one major drawback.

It never happened.

She caught him off guard—again. She came close enough that it would look like they were kissing, but far enough that they weren’t. They were enclosed in almost complete darkness, isolated in a cocoon of night. He could only see her eyes. They stared up at him, beseeching, pleading with him not to pull away, not to make a sound, not to reveal their position.

Ross didn’t move.

It wasn’t because of her silent plea. It was because, even now, moments later, the sound of her voice echoed in his ears. Her accent was straight out of the Bronx, if his ear wasn’t too rusty. And he knew, in a flash of knowledge so instinctive he didn’t dare question it, that this was the person Roy Taylor was looking for.

Taylor was the man chasing her.

Immediately the events of the past few minutes began to shift in Ross’s mind, realigning themselves, taking on new, complicated meanings. Suddenly the warm, pliant and frightened woman in his arms was no longer a casual stranger, but someone who had real importance in his life.

If she was running from Taylor, she had reason to be afraid. More than one.

At last someone burst out of the alley and skidded to a halt. Then came a muffled curse, the sound offering the confirmation he needed. He knew that voice.

Taylor.

He must have stiffened in spite of himself, the need to go after the man that keyed into his system. Taylor was just a few feet away, right behind him. He didn’t know Ross was there. All Ross had to do was turn around and he had him.

The woman’s hands tightened in his hair, not enough to hurt but more than enough to let him know she didn’t intend to let him go.

It was the only reminder he needed. Ross stayed where he was, peering down at the woman in the dark. Though he never would have believed it, he had something more important than Taylor. He had something Taylor wanted. And something Taylor was willing to jump bail to pursue had to be very important indeed.

Though she made no sound, her chest rose and fell in a ragged pattern, causing her breasts to rub against his body in an unconsciously erotic fashion. In spite of himself, he felt his groin tighten.