She's No Angel

He quickly ran through the possible explanations. “No broken-down car,” he muttered as he pulled his foot off the gas pedal of his Jeep, slowing to a crawl a few yards behind her. “No houses around.” Since leaving the highway, he hadn’t seen a single building or gas station. Just a few road signs counting down the miles to hell…make that Trouble, PA.

So maybe she’d been mugged and had fought off her attacker. Or maybe she’d been the attacker and was still clinging to her weapon. His eyes shifted to the tire iron, looking for any telltale signs that it had been used to beat someone recently. Dripping blood, hair, any of that stuff. He saw nothing.

The woman trudged on, impervious to the dig of gravel into her feet as she stuck to the shoulder of the two-lane road. Her soft, filmy dress swirled around her thighs, the afternoon breeze kicking it up a bit higher with each step. High enough to let him know her backside wasn’t her only terrific feature. The woman had some legs to go along with her obviously leather-skinned feet.

He suddenly suspected she was talking out loud. Something was making it impossible for her to hear the six cylinders pistoning a few yards behind her. Judging by the bounce of her brown hair across her shoulders, he suspected her one-sided conversation was a heated one.

“Interesting.” He wondered why he wasn’t tense, as he’d normally be if he spied a person armed with a dangerous object.

Not that this woman emanated danger. Everything about her screamed frustration, not rage. Which he would have understood if he’d seen a disabled car, a broken cell phone nearby and a pair of woman’s shoes…what, stuck in the mud? Carried off by an animal? “Uh-uh.” Didn’t add up.

She was becoming more and more intriguing by the moment.

He hadn’t expected to stumble across anything intriguing this weekend. Not here, anyway, in the lousy little town his grandfather had been holed up in for the past year. His whole reason for coming here to visit was to try to convince Mortimer to bail out of Trouble. But pissed-off brunettes swinging tire irons did intrigue him, and would have even if he wasn’t a cop.

He had no choice but to stop. No, he wasn’t exactly in his jurisdiction. And, since transferring to NYC Police’s cold case and apprehension squad a few months ago, rarely had cause to interact with current victims of crime. Or, considering the tire iron and her visible anger, potential suspects.

When he interacted with the living at all in his more recent cases, he generally spoke to former neighbors or family members. Or even descendents, given the age of some of the case files. Frankly, he didn’t mind that as much as he thought he would when he’d been ordered to accept the transfer a few months ago. At that point, being forced “for his own good” to leave the twentieth-precinct vice squad had had him ready to tell the city to take their badge and shove it. It had felt like a kick in the gut.

An undercover investigation into a high-end club drug ring run by a slime named Ricky Stahl had ended in a number of indictments…and a few embarrassed public officials with druggie kids they’d rather nobody knew about. It had also meant a transfer for Mike. His bosses claimed the area had gotten too hot for him. Mike thought the transfer was more likely payback from embarrassed politicians.

Whatever the true motivation, he’d been shoved straight into 1PP, aka headquarters. He now spent most of his days pouring through musty, yellowed logs and evidence files that smelled as if they belonged in some grandmother’s basement. When not there, he was on the streets, tracking down hesitant witnesses with failing eyesight and dim memories. Every one of whom wanted to serve him coffee cake while they relived the worst experience of their lives…the murder of a loved one.

Somehow, though, despite his initial insistence to anyone who would listen that he was being wasted, he’d grudgingly found himself getting interested in what he was doing. Maybe it wasn’t that surprising. He’d read his grandfather’s ancient Ellery Queen and Mickey Spillane mysteries by the gross as a kid. Solving puzzles, sifting through clues, he’d gotten a real charge out of that stuff once. Who knew he’d get a charge out of doing it for real as an adult?

It challenged him, exercised his brain in a way that posing as a buyer or a john certainly never had. His first successful cold-case closing—solving the 1998 murder of a shopkeeper who’d been gunned down in his own storage room—had given him more satisfaction than he’d ever experienced in Vice. Not just because of how grateful the family had been, but because he’d felt triumphant at having solved an unsolvable mystery.

He’d been a cold-case junkie ever since. Fascinated by the past, putting together one piece at a time of each intricate puzzle. So maybe that was why he couldn’t drive past the stranger…because she was a puzzle. Alone on the road five miles from town. Furious. Armed. And hot.

“Yeah. Time to stop,” he muttered, not knowing whether the puzzle or the hot interested him more.

Behind him, on the back seat, the closest thing Mike had to a commitment—a scruffy dog—lifted his head off his paw and yawned audibly. “We’re not there yet, go back to sleep,” Mike said, not even watching to see if the animal obeyed. He knew he would. Lie down was the only command the lazy mutt ever heard.

Tapping his horn in warning, Mike pulled onto the shoulder behind the brunette. She swung around immediately, but, thankfully, the tire iron stayed down by her side.

Remaining where she was, she watched warily as he stepped out. He shaded his eyes from the late afternoon sun setting over the town of Trouble ahead, squinting through his dark glasses to make out the woman’s features. He still couldn’t determine much, beyond the suspicion that her shape from the front was as good as it had been from behind. Maybe better, judging by the plunging neckline of her halter dress.

Damn, the woman had more curves than a Spirograph.

She’d stopped right beyond a battered road sign, which read Trouble Ahead. Somehow, he already knew the sign was right.

“Afternoon,” he said with a nod.

The woman wasn’t dressed for changing a tire. Or walking barefoot down a country road, for that matter. No, she looked more like one of the rich princesses who strolled down Park Avenue shopping for glittery purses with their tiny Chihuahuas.

“Having trouble?” he asked as he approached her, the sun continuing to interfere with his vision. “Do you need help?”

“Do you happen to have a gun handy?” was her shocking reply.

Actually, he did. Not that he was going to reveal that to someone eager to arm herself. “Sorry. Not today.”

He slowed his steps. Though he still didn’t sense she was dangerous to him, she felt bloodlust toward someone else. Maybe the person who’d stranded her out here sans car and shoes.

“Then I don’t need your help,” she said, her words jagged, choppy, as if now that she’d stopped walking she could finally suck in a few breaths of air. The harsh way she punctuated each word underscored his first impression—she was mad as hell.

And, he suspected, even more hot from the front than she’d been from behind. That dress was cut lower than he’d thought, and the filmy fabric outlined some generous hips. “Are you lost?”

She frowned. “Do I look lost?”

“No. You look stranded.”

“Score one for the big guy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another five miles to walk into town.”

As he moved to within two feet of her, the woman’s own form blocked most of the sun until just a few rays spiked out from behind her head, like a huge halo. The effect was dazzling—blinding—but he still pushed his sunglasses up onto his head.

No one had ever accused him of being sentimental or sappy. But the way the light caught her hair, reflecting on individual strands of brown, gold and red and turning it into a veil of color, he couldn’t help staring.

When he forced himself to focus on the stranger’s face, he suddenly had to suck in a quick, surprised breath of his own. Because that face was good. Very good, with the high cheekbones and hollowed-out cheeks that women begged plastic surgeons for.

She also had a small, straight nose and dark eyes that were a swirling mix of blue and stormy gray. They were framed by heavily lashed lids. The strong jaw, and a slight jut to her chin said she was determined. Despite being tightly clenched, her mouth was obviously designed with sin in mind. Her naturally full lips would never need that crap women used to make themselves look like injected-to-death movie stars.

She wasn’t too young—probably right around his age, or maybe even older. There was a maturity in the strength of her profile, in the confident way she carried herself.

He liked what he saw. A lot. This was the first time in ages that he’d liked the looks of a woman so much he’d actually begun to wonder whether he owned any unexpired condoms.

And she was staring at him with pure malice.

“Bad day, huh?”

“You could say that.”

“So, uh, why do you need a gun?”

“To shoot someone,” she snapped, looking at him as if he were stupid. “Two someones, actually.”

He quickly scanned the woman’s features, looking for her true intent. He’d met a lot of criminals in his seven years on the force, and he knew angry, frustrated threats from legitimate ones. This one, judging by the resigned irritation in her tone—rather than rage—was all bark and no bite. At least, he hoped. But he still thought about his service weapon, and wondered if he was going to have to use it to stop her from following through on her threats.

Wouldn’t be the first time he’d stepped between a murderous woman and her intended target. Just the thought of that incident made the scar in his right shoulder ache…and the one around his heart grow a little harder.

“Dumb question.” Glancing at the object in her hand, he tried again. “Why are you carrying a tire iron?”

She frowned, appearing puzzled by the ridiculousness of the query. Tilting her head to the side until her long hair brushed her arm, she explained, “Because I don’t have a gun, of course.”

Well, color him stupid for not knowing that. “Is there someone in particular you plan to kill or would anybody do?”

“Don’t worry. You’re quite safe,” she said, that jaw still tense but some of the stiffness easing out of her shoulders. “However, two little old ladies from hell better have gone into the witness protection program before I get back into town.”

“Killing little old ladies.” He tsked and shook his head, growing even less alarmed. But he didn’t let his guard down completely. “That’s not very polite.”