Captive Star

  “Yeah.” He rubbed his thumb gingerly over the wound. It still stung. “I’d say I deserved it, but you were cooperating initially.”

  That stung, too. The truth often did. “You go right on thinking that, Jack.” She all but purred it. “I’m sure an ego like yours requires regular delusions.”

  “Sugar, I know a delusion from a lip lock. But we’ve got more important things to do than discuss your attraction for me.” Pleased with that last sally, he reached into one of the bags. “Burgers.”

  The smell hit her like a fist, right in the empty stomach. Her mouth watered. “So are we going to hole up here like a couple of escaped convicts—” she rattled her chain for emphasis “—and eat greasy food?”

  “You bet.” He handed her a burger and took out an order of fries designed to clog the arteries and improve the mood. “I think better when I’m eating.”

  Companionably, he stretched out beside her, back against the headboard, legs extended, food on his lap. “We’ve got us a serious problem here.”

  “If we’ve got us a serious problem here, why am I the only one with handcuffs?”

  He loved the sarcastic edge in her voice, and he wondered what was wrong with him. “Because you’d have done something stupid if I hadn’t left you secured. I’m looking out for my investment.” He gestured with the rest of his burger. “And that’s you, sugar.”

  “I can look out for myself. And if I’m hiring you, then you should be taking orders. The first order is unlock these damn things.”

  “I’ll get to it, once we set up the ground rules.” He popped open a paper package of salt, dribbled it on the fries. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Well then.” She munched bitterly on an over-cooked burger between two slices of slightly stale bun. “Why am I worried? You’ve been thinking.”

  “You’ve got a sarcastic mouth. But I like that about you.” He handed her a tiny paper napkin. “You got ketchup on your chin. Now, somebody put the pressure on Ralph—enough that Ralph falsified official paperwork and put my butt in a sling. He wouldn’t have done it for money—not that Ralph doesn’t like money,” Jack continued. “But he wouldn’t risk his license, or risk me coming after him, for a few bucks. So he was saving his skin.”

  “And since Ralph is a pillar of the community, no doubt, this narrows down the list?”

  “It means it was somebody with punch, somebody who wasn’t afraid old Ralph would tip me off or go to the cops. Somebody who wanted you taken out. Who knows you’ve got the rock?”

  “Nobody, except the person who sent it to me.” She frowned at her burger. “And possibly one other.”

  “If more than one person knows a secret, it isn’t a secret. How did your friend get the diamond, M.J.? You can’t keep dancing around the data here.”

  “I’ll tell you after I clear it with my friend. I have to make a phone call.”

  “No calls.”

  “You called Ralph,” she pointed out.

  “I took a chance, and we were mobile. You’re not making any calls until I know the score. The diamond was shipped just yesterday,” he mused. “They tagged you fast.”

  “Which means they tagged my friend.” Her stomach turned over. “Jack, please. I have to call. I have to know.”

  The emotion choking her voice both weakened and annoyed him. He stared into her eyes. “How much does he mean to you?”

  She started to correct him, then just shook her head. “Everything. No one in the world means more to me.”

  “Lucky guy.”

  It wasn’t the response she’d wanted or expected. Fueled by frustration and fears, she grabbed his shirt. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Someone tried to kill us. How can we just sit here?”

  “That’s just why we’re sitting here. We let them chase their tails awhile. Your friend’s on his own for now. And since I can’t picture you falling for some jerk who can’t handle himself, he should be fine.”

  “You don’t understand anything.” She sat back, dragged her fingers through her hair. “God, this is a mess. I should be getting ready to go in to work now, and instead I’m stuck here with you. I’m supposed to be behind the stick tonight.”

  “You tend bar?” He lifted a brow. “I thought you owned the place.”

  “That’s right, I own the place.” It was a source of pride. “I like tending bar. You have a problem with that?”

  “Nope.” Since the topic had distracted her, he followed it. “Are you any good?”

  “Nobody complains.”

  “How’d you get into the business?” When she eyed him owlishly, he shrugged. “Come on, a little conversation over a meal can’t hurt. We got time to kill.”

  That wasn’t all she wanted to kill, but the rest would have to wait. “I’m a fourth-generation pub owner. My great-grandfather ran his own public house in Dublin. My grandfather immigrated to New York and worked behind the stick in his own pub. He passed it to my father when he moved to Florida. I practically grew up behind the bar.”

  “What part of New York?”

  “West Side, Seventy-ninth and Columbus.”

  “O’Leary’s.” The grin came quick and close to dreamy. “Lots of dark wood and lots of brass. Live Irish music on Saturday nights. And they build the finest Guinness this side of the Atlantic.”

  She eyed him again, intrigued despite herself. “You’ve been there?”

  “I downed many a pint in O’Leary’s. That would have been ten years ago, more or less.” He’d been in college then, he remembered. Working his way through courses in law and literature and trying to make up his mind who the devil he was. “I was up there tracing a skip about three years ago. Stopped in. Nothing had changed, not even the scars on that old pine bar.”

  It made her sentimental—couldn’t be helped. “Nothing changes at O’Leary’s.”

  “I swear the same two guys were sitting on the same stools at the end of the bar—smoking cigars, reading the Racing Form and drinking Irish.”

  “Callahan and O’Neal.” It made her smile. “They’ll die on those stools.”

  “And your father. Pat O’Leary. Son of a bitch.” Steeped in the haze of memory, he shut his eyes. “That big, wide Irish face and wiry shock of red hair, with a voice straight out of a Cagney movie.”

  “Yeah, that’s Pop,” she murmured, only more sentimental.

  “You know, when I walked in—it had been at least six years since I’d walked out—your father grinned at me. ‘How are you this evening, college boy?’ he said to me, and took a pint glass and starting building my beer.”

  “You went to college?”

  His hazy pleasure dimmed considerably at the shock in her voice. He opened one eye. “So?”

  “So, you don’t look like the college type.” She shrugged and went back to her burger. “I build a damn good Guinness myself. Could use one now.”

  “Me too. Maybe later. So this friend of yours, how long have you known him?”

  “My friend and I go back to our own college days. There’s no one I trust more, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Maybe you ought to rethink it. Just consider,” he said when her eyes fired. “The Three Stars are a big temptation, for anyone. So maybe he was tempted, maybe he got in over his head.”

  “No, it doesn’t play like that. but I think someone else might have, and if my friend found out about it…” She pressed her lips together. “If you wanted to protect those stones, to make certain they weren’t stolen, didn’t fall as a group into the wrong hands, what would you do?”

  “It isn’t a matter of what I’d do,” he pointed out, “but what he’d do.”

  “Separate them,” M.J. said. “Pass them on to people you could trust without question. People who would go to the wall for you, because you’d do the same for them. Without question.”

  “Absolute trust, absolute loyalty?” He balled his napkin, two-pointed it into the waste can. “I can’t buy it.”

  “Then I’m s
orry for you,” she murmured. “Because you can’t buy it. It just is. Don’t you have anyone who’d go to the wall for you, Jack?”

  “No. And there’s no one I’d go to the wall for.” For the first time in his life, it bothered him to realize it. He scooted down, closed his eyes. “I’m taking a nap.”

  “You’re taking a what?”

  “A nap. You’d be smart to do the same.”

  “How can you possibly sleep at a time like this?”

  “Because I’m tired.” His voice was edgy. “And because I don’t think I’m going to get much sleep once we get started. We’ve got a couple hours before sundown.”

  “And what happens at sundown?”

  “It gets dark,” he said, and tuned her out.

  She couldn’t believe it. The man had shut down like a machine switched off—like a hypnotist’s subject at the snap of a finger. Like a… She scowled when she ran out of analogies.

  At least he didn’t snore.

  Well, this was just fine, she fumed. This was just dandy. What was she supposed to do while he had his little lie-me-down?

  M.J. nibbled on the last of her fries, frowned at the TV screen, where the giant lizard was just meeting his violent end. The cable channel had promised more where that came from on its Marathon Monsters and Heroes Holiday Weekend Festival.

  Oh, goody.

  She lay in the darkened room, considering her options. And, considering, fell asleep.

  And, sleeping, dreamed of monsters and heroes and a blue diamond that pulsed like a living heart.

  Jack woke wrapped in female. He smelled her first, a tang, just a little sharp, of lemony soap. Clean, fresh, and simple.

  He heard her—the slow, even, relaxed breathing. Felt the quiet intimacy of shared sleep. His blood began to stir even before he felt her.

  Long, limber limbs. A shapely yard of leg was tossed over his own. One well-toned arm, with skin as smooth as new cream, was flung over his chest. Her head was settled companionably on his shoulder.

  M.J. was a cuddler, he realized, and smiled to himself. Who’d have thought it? Before he could talk himself out of it, he lifted a hand, brushed it lightly over her tousled cap of hair. Bright silk, he mused. It was quite a contrast to all that angled toughness.

  She sure had style. His kind of style, he decided, and wondered what direction they might have taken if he just walked into her pub one night and put some moves on her.

  She’d have kicked him out on his butt, he thought, and grinned. What a woman.

  It was too bad, too damn bad, that he didn’t have time to try out those moves. Because he really wanted another taste of her.

  And because he did, he slid out from under her, stood and stretched out the kinks while she shifted and tried to find comfort. She rolled onto her back and flung her free hand over her head.

  The restless animal inside him stirred.

  He grabbed it in a choke hold and reminded himself that he was, occasionally, a civilized man. Civilized men didn’t climb onto a sleeping woman and dive in.

  But they could think about it.

  Since it would be safer all around to think about it at a distance, he went into the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face and considered his next move.

  In dreams, she was holding the stone in her hand, wondering at it, as streams of sunlight danced through the canopy of trees. Instead of penetrating the stone, the rays bounced off, creating a flashing whirl of beauty that stung the eyes and burned the soul.

  It was hers to hold, if not to keep. The answers were there, secreted inside, if only she knew where to look.

  From somewhere came the growl of a beast, low and feral. She turned toward it, rather than away, the stone protected in the fist of her hand, her other raised to defend.

  Something moved slyly in the brush, hidden, waiting, searching. Hunting.

  Then he was there, astride a massive black horse. At his side was a sword of dull silver, its width a thick slab of violence. His gray eyes were granite-hard, and as dangerous as any beast that slunk over the ground. He held a hand down to her, and there was challenge in that slow smile.

  Danger ahead. Danger behind.

  She stepped forward, clasped hands with him and let him pull her up on the gleaming black horse. The horse reared high, trumpeted. When they rode, they rode fast. The blood beating in her head had nothing to do with fear, and everything to do with triumph.

  She came awake with her heart pounding and her blood high. She was in the dim, cramped motel room, with Jack shaking her shoulder roughly.

  “What? What?”

  “Nap’s over.” He considered kissing her awake, risking her fist in his face. But it would be too distracting. “We’ve got places to go.”

  “Where?” She struggled to shake off sleep, and the silky remnants of the dream.

  “To visit a friend.” He unlocked the cuffs from the headboard, snapped them on his own wrist, linking M.J. to him.

  “You have a friend?”

  “Ah, she’s awake now.” He pulled her outside, into a misty dusk that still pulsed with heat. “Get in and slide over,” he instructed when he opened the driver’s side door.

  She was still groggy enough that she obeyed without question. But by the time he’d started the engine, her wits were back. “Look, Jack, these handcuffs have got to go.”

  “I don’t know, I kind of like them this way. Did you ever see that movie with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier? Great flick.”

  “We’re not escaped cons running for a train here, Dakota. If we’re going to have a business relationship, there has to be an element of trust.”

  “Sugar, you don’t trust me any more than I trust you.” He steered out of the pitted lot, kept to the speed limit. “Look at it this way.” He lifted his hand, causing hers to jerk. “We’re both in the same boat. And I could have just left you back there.”

  She drummed her fingers on her knee. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I thought about it,” he admitted. “I could move faster without you along. But I’d rather keep my eye on you. And if things go wrong and I can’t get back, I’d hate for you to have to explain why you’re cuffed to the bed of a cheap motel.”

  “Damn considerate of you.”

  “I thought so. Though it’s your fault I’m flying blind. It’d be easier if you’d fill in the blanks.”

  “Think of it as a challenge.”

  “Oh, I do. It, and you.” He slanted her a look. “What’s this guy got, M.J.? This friend of yours you’d risk so much for?”

  She looked out her window, thought of Bailey. Then pushed the thought aside. Worry for Bailey only brought the fear back, and fear clouded the mind and made it sluggish.

  “You wouldn’t understand love, would you, Jack?” Her voice was quiet, without its usual edge, and her gaze passed over his face in a slow search. “The kind that doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t require favors or have limits.”

  “No.” Inside the emptiness her words brought him curled an edgy fist of envy. “I’d say if you don’t ask questions or have limits, you’re a fool.”

  “And you’re no fool.”

  “Under the circumstances, you should be grateful I’m not. I’ll get you out of this, M.J. Then you’ll owe me fifty thousand.”

  “You know your priorities,” she said with a sneer.

  “Yeah, money smooths out a lot of bumps on the road. And I say before you pay me off we end up in bed again. Only this time it won’t be to take a nap.”

  She turned toward him fully, and ignored the quick pulse of excitement in her gut. “Dakota, the only way I’ll end up in the sack with you is if you handcuff me again.”

  There was that smile, slow, insolent, damnably attractive. “Well, that would be interesting, wouldn’t it?”

  Wanting to make time, he swung onto the interstate, headed north. And he promised himself that not only would he get her into bed, but she wouldn’t think of another man when he did.

  “You??
?re heading back to D.C.”

  “That’s right. We’ve got some business there.” In the glare of oncoming headlights, his face was grim.

  He took a roundabout route, circling, cruising past his objective, winding his way back, until he was satisfied none of the cars parked on the block were occupied.

  There was pedestrian traffic, as well. He’d sized it up by his second pass. Deals were being made, he mused. And that kind of business kept people moving.

  “Nice neighborhood,” she commented, watching a drunk stumble out of a liquor store with a brown paper sack. “Just charming. Yours?”

  “Ralph’s. We’re only a couple blocks from the courthouse.” He cruised past a prostitute who was well off the usual stroll and pulled around the corner. “He likes the location.”

  It was an area, she knew, that even the most fearless cabbies preferred to avoid. An area where life was often worth less than the spit on the side walk, and those who valued theirs locked their doors tight before sundown and waited for morning.

  Here, the graffiti smeared on the crumbling buildings wasn’t an art form. It was a threat.

  She heard someone swearing viciously, then the sound of breaking glass. “A man of taste and refinement, your friend Ralph.”

  “Former friend.” He took her hand, obliging her to slide across the seat when he climbed out.

  “That you, Dakota? That you?” A man slipped out of the shadows of a doorway. His eyes were fire red and skittish as a whipped dog’s. He ran the back of his hand over his mouth as he shambled forward in battered high-tops and an over coat that had to be stifling in the midsummer heat.

  “Yeah, Freddie. How’s it going?”

  “Been better. Been better, Jack, you know?” His eyes passed over M.J., then moved on. “Been better,” he said again.

  “Yeah, I know.” Jack reached in his front pocket for the bills he’d already placed there. “You could use a hot meal.”

  “A hot meal.” Freddie stared at the bills, moistened his lips. “Sure could do with a hot meal, all right.”

  “You seen Ralph?”

  “Ain’t.” Freddie’s shaky fingers reached for the money, clamped on. He blinked up when Jack continued to hold the bills. “Ain’t,” he repeated. “Musta closed up early. It’s a holiday, the Fourth of Ju-ly. Damn kids been setting off firecrackers already. Can’t tell them from gunshots. Damn kids.”

  “When’s the last time you saw Ralph?”

  “I dunno. Yesterday?” He looked at Jack for approval. “Yesterday, probably. I’ve been here awhile, but I ain’t seen him. And his place is locked up.”

  “Have you seen anybody else who doesn’t belong here?”

  “Her.” Freddie pointed at M.J. and smiled. “She don’t.”

  “Besides her.”

  “Nope. Nobody.” The voice went whiny. “I sure been better, Jack, you know.”

  “Yeah.” Without bothering to sigh, Jack turned the money loose. “Get lost, Freddie.”

  “Yeah, okay.” And he hurried down the street, around the corner.

  “He’s not going to buy food,” M.J. murmured. “You know what he’s going to buy with that.”

  “You can’t save the world. Sometimes you can’t even save a little piece of it. But maybe he won’t mug anybody tonight, or get himself shot trying to.” Jack shrugged. “He’s been dead since the first time he picked up a needle. Nothing I can do about it.”

  “Then why do you feel so lousy about it?” She lifted a brow when he looked down at her. “It’s all over your face, Dakota.”