“Cough it up, you bitch!” Dr. Jekell.
“Come on, Renee, quit jerking us off.” Random.
“It’s nice to be popular,” she commented.
“Assholes,” Eric muttered. He was walking in a tight circle and she noticed the way his gaze flicked from one spot to another—door, door, window, bathroom door, ego wall, picture frames, window. Assessing targets. It was kind of sexy, if nerve-racking. She was pretty sure he hadn’t been doing that while they were horizontal in the conference room, but there was no way to—”Thank God you ran into me today.”
“Oh, I was just thinking that,” she said sarcastically. She flinched as the door rattled in its frame again. Jekell was short, but built like a fire hydrant and about as thickheaded. She had no doubt he’d get the door open in the next few minutes, especially with Peter Random’s help. “Let’s blow this joint, what do you say?”
“Working on it,” he muttered.
She crossed the room, jerked up the shades, and pointed. “Look. That building? It’s the custodian’s storehouse.”
Eric came swiftly to her side and looked down at the small, square building on the ground. “What is that, about a ten-foot drop?”
“Yeah. Then we can get to the ground from that roof, and hotfoot it to the car. It’ll hurt, but we probably won’t break anything.” She shoved the window, but it only popped out about six inches.
“Renee, let us in right now, you fucking bitch!”
She flinched. She couldn’t help it. In her entire life, no one had ever spoken to her like that, in a tone of such venomous hatred. Certainly no one she’d ever worked for.
Eric was looking at her with some concern, and she forced a smile. “Kind of sounds like my grandpa before we put him in the home.”
“Uh-huh. Stand back.” He picked up the desk chair and, when she stepped away, swung it into the window, which shattered with a satisfying crash. He pulled off his suit jacket, which made his misbuttoned clothing and mussed hair even more noticeable, and laid it over the windowsill. “Lie down over this. I’ll lower you down.”
The desk started to slide away from the door and she could hear Peter and Jekell grunting as they braced their weight and pushed. Renee climbed through the window, wriggled around, and hung from the sill. Eric grabbed her wrists and lowered her as far as he could reach, then let go. She dropped about eight feet to the roof of the shack and rolled away, giving Eric room. He hit the roof about three seconds later.
“Have I mentioned how much I fucking hate heights?” he asked through gritted teeth, helping her to her feet.
“No. Really? You hate heights? But today you’ve been—”
“Following you through every damned window in the world, God help me.” He looked up at the window they’d just climbed from, and shuddered. “At least it wasn’t as far as it was when we jumped to the skyway this afternoon.”
“Yeah, yeah. Come on, let’s get down. I doubt those two will follow, but…”
“Come back here, you bitch!”
“Boy, would I like to shove the barrel of my gun in that guy’s mouth,” Eric muttered.
“Where is your gun?”
“I don’t have a carry permit for this state,” he admitted sheepishly.
She laughed; she couldn’t help it. “Not very heroic.”
“What, obeying gun laws? Au contraire.”
It was a perfectly still night, not a breath of wind, and thus she could hear very plainly when Jekell uttered the words that froze her blood: “Shoot them, you idiot.”
“Get to the ground,” Eric murmured. “Quickly.” He stood protectively in front of her while she hurried to the edge of the roof.
Random’s voice was uncharacteristically nervous. “I’m not shooting a woman, no matter how big a pain in my ass she’s been.”
“Give me that!” Jekell sounded far more focused.
She got down, rolled over, and slid over on her stomach. Again, Eric gripped her wrists. “You know him better than I do,” he said, lowering her down. “Will he shoot?”
They both heard the whine of bullets at the same time. She saw Eric’s shirt collar twitch and screamed at the near miss.
“Guess that answers that,” he said lightly.
She took a deep, gulping breath. So close! Three inches to the right and his blood would be raining down into her face. “For sixty billion dollars, he’d shoot his grandma. Now let go and get down here!”
They heard a tussle, and Random shouting. Then another shot.
“Shit! Felt the wind of that one, too. Off you go.” He let go, and for the twentieth time in six hours, she dropped. Her luck finally caught up with her; she felt the stab of pain race up her ankle and settle in her knee.
“Hurry up!” she cried, trying to stand and failing. “Get down here!”
Jekell appeared interested in emptying the clip into either one of them; luckily, like most desk jockeys, he was a terrible shot. Still, she was terrified and wouldn’t relax until Eric was beside her on the ground. Funny. She thought she’d been scared before today, but that was nothing to how she felt now, while the man she loved was dodging bullets.
The tree behind her was shaking, but that was the only evidence that the Jackal was killing anything. She imagined the near misses were dumb luck—hers and his.
Eric landed beside her with an “Oof!” and grabbed her hand. She yelped when he tried to pull her to her feet. “What’s wrong? Are you hit?”
“My ankle. Landed wrong—can you believe it? Get—hey!” He bent and scooped her into his arms like a child. “Eric, for crying out loud, I weigh a ton. You can’t haul me around like a toddler.”
“Watch me.”
He took two steps, and then the spot beam was in their eyes and he nearly dropped her.
“Police! Hold it right there!”
Chapter Twelve
“Ummmmm.”
“Good?”
“Ohhhh, yeah. Do that again.”
“Beg me.”
“Please, please do that again. I’ll die if you don’t.”
Eric leaned forward and dropped another Godiva truffle into her open mouth. Renee chewed, her eyes rolling blissfully. Chocolate was better than codeine, any day. Besides, her ankle hardly hurt anymore. A mild sprain, at worst.
He smiled at her. “Chocoholic, huh?”
“Let’s put it this way: I need it like diabetics need insulin.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” He rolled over on his back and stretched. It was the next evening. Renee had had about fourteen hours of sleep; they were comfortably ensconced in the Hyatt and had just gorged themselves downstairs at the Oceanaire Seafood Room. She was quite sure she would never be able to look at a crab leg again.
After the police had taken their statements and let them go, Eric had insisted she accompany him to a new hotel. He checked all the exits and made her swear up and down she wouldn’t slip out on him in the middle of the night. It was touching, as only rampant paranoia can be.
He yawned and pulled her close for a quick snuggle. “I still can’t believe Dr. Foster called the cops,” he said to the top of her head.
She swallowed the truffle and looked longingly at the gold box beside Eric. No, eight was probably enough. “Me neither. Here I thought she left us on our own, when she was actually sending for the cavalry. Thank God. I thought Dr. Jekell was going to have an embolism on the spot.”
“He’s lucky I didn’t kick his ass on the spot,” Eric said darkly. “Piece of shit crook, shooting at my girl.”
“Actually, it looked to me like he was shooting at you. Badly, of course, but still…”
Eric got up and checked the locks one last time. Renee filched one last truffle, then reluctantly closed the box and put it on the bedside table. “You’re not still worried, are you? I mean… it’s over. Right?”
“Right. Old habits. And I don’t like the way Peter Random disappeared and left Jekell holding the bag. I’d prefer not to let you out of my sight unti
l he turns up again.”
Actually, Renee quite liked the way Peter had done a quick fade when things started to go bad. Thus, there was no one to corroborate Dr. Jekell’s version of events: namely, that Renee had stolen company property and tried to kill him. Since he was waving an empty gun at her as he said this, the police were skeptical, to say the least.
And when Eric showed them his credentials, and they made a few phone calls to verify his bona fides, things looked considerably worse for Dr. Jekell, who was by then shrieking like a madman.
Although she was the thief, Dr. Jekell had been arrested. The charges were attempted kidnapping, reckless endangerment, attempted murder, possession of an unlicensed handgun, and eventually assaulting a police officer. Every time Renee thought about the look on Jekell’s face when the cops read him his rights, she felt like breaking into song.
“I asked you last night, before we went to sleep, but you dodged the question—where is PaceIC?”
“Right now? Your shaving kit.”
“Oh. That’s good. I thought—what?”
She mimed shaving her chin. “What, I have to get out hand puppets? I put. It in. Your shaving. Kit.”
“The vial worth billions is next to my Remington?”
“Calm down. I’m giving it to Jennifer Hildebrandt tomorrow morning.”
“Where was it before? When we were running all over the place?”
“Your shaving kit.”
Eric, who had been pacing, now stopped and put his head in his hands. “You’re killing me. The whole time?”
“I figured you’d never guess that when I left your room in a rage, I left PaceIC behind. Figured you wouldn’t even bother to look. I’m trying to erase all tones of smugness from my voice as I say this: I was right. And with Random MIA, Jekell in jail, and Dr. Foster firmly on our side, it’ll be safe there for one more night.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “You’re one woman in a million.”
“I’m a woman in sixty billion. I liked Foster’s idea. Give it to someone who can reverse engineer it, which will force Anodyne to put it on the market ASAP. Everybody wins. Except that SOB, Dr. Jekell. When he gets out of jail, let’s go break his kneecaps.”
“It’s a date.”
“I suppose I should head home tomorrow morning,” Renee continued as he shut out the lights and climbed into bed. Funny how it seemed perfectly natural to share a bed with this man. If he hadn’t been there, the bed would have seemed much too big. “Haven’t been to my apartment all week. My cat would be dead, if I had one.”
“Come with me,” he coaxed. His hand slipped into her robe and cupped her left breast. “We can fly out to DC tomorrow.”
“Now, why would I do that?” she teased. “We’ve agreed it’s over.”
“Wrong, m’dear. It’s just beginning.”
She groaned. “I can’t take another week like this last one.”
His thumb was rubbing over her nipple, coaxing it into stiffness. “Oh, come on,” he said, and she knew he was smiling at her in the dark. “It wasn’t all bad.”
“There might have been one or two less sucky spots.”
“How’s your ankle?”
“Not too sore for what you’re thinking. So that’s it, huh? Good-bye, Minneapolis, hello, DC?”
“Just for a while. I want to show you the sights, introduce you to my family.”
“You have family out there?”
Now his hands were sliding lower, and she wriggled closer to him and let her own hands do some wandering. “Yes. See, there’s so much we don’t know about each other. And I think we should spend the rest of our lives finding everything out.”
“Well… I know you’re pretty good in bed. Not that we’ve actually done it in a bed. And I know you don’t like heights, but you don’t hesitate to jump out windows for me. And I know you—ah. Yes. That’s—um. Don’t stop doing that.”
“I won’t if you won’t. Say it, Renee.”
“I love your dick.”
A sigh in the dark. “Renee…”
“Oh, and the rest of you, I’s’pose. But not because you’ve got great hands. And not because you’re ridiculously good looking.”
“Oh? Then why?”
She kissed him softly, sweetly, breathed in his scent, and was completely happy for the first time in a very long time. “I think, Eric, it’s because you caught me,” she whispered. “Now, what do you think about that?”
He showed her.
LOVELY LIES
Prologue
ICU/Oncology
Abbott Northwestern Hospital
One year earlier
“Lori…”
She closed her anatomy book at once and went to her mother’s side. She spent so much time in this room. The smell of death, bleach, and medicine never quite left her clothes and hair. “Mom, you should be resting.”
“I’ve been in and out of a coma for the past three weeks,” her mother said with a trace of the old snap. “I can’t get much more rested. Now you listen, Lori-bird. For a change, everything seems awfully clear. Like after I quit drinking wine at night! That won’t last long. I don’t have much time—”
“Don’t talk like that,” she said stonily, willing the tears not to fall. “Remission is right around the corner.”
“Oh, dear. You’re not doing well in medical school, are you?”
Lori laughed, the sound shocking and out of place on the ward. Well, her mother could always do that. “You know perfectly well that these things aren’t always—”
“Hush up and listen,” she snapped softly, tugging Lori closer. “Leave now. Tonight. It’ll be over tonight. And you have to get away, Lori. Get away from both of them.”
“Both…”
“I know, Lori. I’ve known for a long time. You should have told me—but we don’t have time for that right now. I’ve bought you some time, all I could. You leave now.”
Shocked, she took her mother’s hand, which had all the weight and warmth of a dead sparrow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Will you stop? It’s not funny. I’m not leaving you.”
“No more time… for jokes. My friends—my doctor friends—have promised. It’s over tonight. They’ll see to it. Do you understand?”
She said nothing.
“Good. Then go. Get gone and stay gone. For me, Lori. More, for yourself.”
“I can’t—” She swallowed the rest of her sentence. Stupid—and monstrously selfish—to burden her mother with her problems now. Problems neither of them could help. “I can’t go.”
“You’d better. They’ll be after you before the ink of my death certificate is dry. Promise.”
“Mom—”
The frail grip on Lori’s hand tightened. “Promise.”
“I promise.”
“Good. That’s good.” Her mother relaxed. “And don’t worry, Lori. You’ll find help. A random stranger, if nothing else.”
“What, Mom?”
But her mother had already fallen asleep.
Obedient in all things, Lori gathered up her things and walked out of the room.
She never saw her mother again, not even in dreams.
Chapter One
Peter Random knocked back his Rusty Nail with two gulps, his gaze never leaving the filthy television screen by the bar. He clutched his lottery ticket with one hand, and raised his empty glass with the other.
“Sure you wouldn’t rather have a ginger ale?” the bartender asked.
“Sure you wouldn’t rather have a black eye?”
“Oooh, meee-yow! Down, kitty.” Mark deftly swept away the empty glass and, in a few efficient motions, placed a fresh drink in front of Peter. “I thought you were an alcoholic.”
“Alcoholics go to meetings,” he said absently. Come on, come on. Get to the winning numbers. Who cares about more corporate layoffs? Call that news? Welcome to the club, losers. “Me, I just like the sauce.”
“You’re a dinosaur, Random.” Mark softened
the criticism with a grin. “Nobody says sauce anymore.”
Peter grunted in response, but couldn’t help thinking Mark had a point. He really was a throwback. He should have been born in the forties, been one of those hard-hearted gumshoes of the old silver screen, a gun in one hand and a shot of whiskey in the other. Some gorgeous, dangerous dame on his arm, and bad guys just behind the last corner.
Yeah.
Instead, he did background checks for a biotech firm. Checking up on overgrown geeks for a living, a thrill a minute. Correct that: He used to do background checks for a biotech firm. Not anymore, boys and girls. When that goody-goody snot, Renee Jardin, got PaceIC out of Anodyne and Axelrod helped her get away, Peter did a quick fade. No use hanging around—everything was about to go to shit.
He hadn’t been wrong, either. Anodyne was about to go belly up, and the feds had come for the Jackal. Heh. That was almost worth losing his job. He hadn’t minded trying to put the squeeze on Renee—she did steal Anodyne property—but toward the end, the Jackal had completely lost it. And Peter wasn’t shooting nobody over some dumb medical thing, nobody, especially not a woman.
Seeing Jackal handcuffed, foaming like a mad dog, raving that they hadn’t seen the last of him… yeah, that made everything worthwhile. Almost.
He didn’t mind Dr. Jekell taking the fall. The asshole had put everything in motion; he should accept the consequences. But Peter did mind missing his rent payment for the second month in a row. His landlady, Mrs. O’Halloran, looked like an old-time TV grandma, all apple cheeks and spectacles and kindly, twinkling blue eyes. But she had the temper of a starving wolverine and, truth be told, he was scared to death of her. So no going back home until he had a new job.
“Hey, Mark. You guys hiring?”
The bartender laughed. “First of all, putting you in charge of the booze would be like putting a dog in charge of the Alpo. Second, we don’t need a bouncer. Here come your numbers.”