She didn’t answer any of his questions, just determinedly tugged him along behind her as she unerringly found her way back to the room where they’d nearly been killed. It would have taken Jared about a week to find that room again, but Kara had them there in five minutes.
And he absolutely could not figure out how she’d known the cops were on the way. It explained her sudden relaxation, how she shifted from urgently wanting to leave to urgently wanting to hang around. But it didn’t explain why she was bringing them entirely too close to the cops.
“Are you going to make sure they arrest Carlotti?” he whispered, then realized he could have spoken in a normal tone of voice, because she threw open the door and marched right up to the knot of cops clustered around the handcuffed bad guys. “What are you doing?”
“Good evening, officers,” she said politely. “Mr. Carlotti has put a contract on Dr. Dean’s life. This is Dr. Dean,” she added, prying Jared’s fingers away from her hand one by one. “I myself can testify to several attempted assaults, and attempted murder.”
“What are you doing?” Jared practically shrieked.
“Oh-ho,” one of the cops said, grinning at Kara.
“What are you looking at, flatfoot?” Jared growled.
“Also,” Kara continued loudly, “I need to be charged with assaulting a police officer. Your undercover cop is up on the third floor outside the accounting offices. He’s mildly concussed. You’ll know him because there’s a pail right next to him,” she added helpfully.
“Undercover …” Jared trailed off in horror. The bad guy he’d bashed was a cop? Kara had known? And was going to take the heat for it? “But I was the one who—oooof!” He hadn’t been fast enough to avoid her elbow to his solar plexus, which effectively robbed him of enough air to speak for the better part of a minute. He bent forward, gasping.
“That’s enough of that,” another cop said sternly. Kara obediently stepped away from Jared, her hands in the air. “You’re saying you have knowledge of a contracted murder? And felonies? And you admit to assaulting—”
“Yes, yes, can we get going, please?” she said impatiently. “Dr. Dean’s not going to be out of breath much longer. Oh! I almost forgot. My given name is Kara Jayne Jones, aka Robbing Hood, aka the Avenging Angel. Just the other night, I hacked into the Freibur Mansion. I can tell you exactly how I did it. Maybe,” she continued politely as another police officer deftly cuffed her hands behind her back, “you want to give the D.A. a call when we get to the station house?”
“We’ll straighten all that out later, ma’am. I’m going to read you your rights now, okay?”
“It’s really not necessary. I have the right to remain silent,” she recited obediently, “and if I give up that right, anything I say may be used against me in a court of law. Which is unlikely to ever happen, because the D.A. is so overworked, he’ll go for a plea bargain. Also, I have the right to an attorney. If I don’t have the funds for one—and I don’t, by the way, I give most of my money to charities—the court will appoint one for me. He or she will also be woefully overworked and will push for a plea. Which suits me fine. It’s really for the best, Jared. Stop looking at me like that,” she added sharply. “I’ve been selfish to avoid testifying, just because I didn’t want to go to jail. You’re right, I am a coward. But if I quit trying to hide my past, I can keep you safe, put Carlotti away forever, and stop running.” She shrugged and smiled. “It’s a no-brainer, really.”
He sucked in a breath and straightened painfully. His upper abdomen was throbbing dully. What had she poked him with, a stick of dynamite? “Can’t …” he wheezed. “Can’t let you … do this … for me.”
“Be reasonable,” she advised, as a cop, who’d been listening intently while trying not to show it, started to lead her away. “What’s a little jail time—okay, a lot of jail time—if it means you’re safe?” she continued over one shoulder. “I can do time standing on my head, Jared. It’s a lot easier than being out in the real world. Think about it. My rent will never go up!” She shouted that last as the door slammed and he could hear her laughing—laughing!—as she was led to a police car.
“No!” he screamed, lunging after her, only to be caught by the shoulder and hauled back. He turned furiously and threw a punch before he could stop himself. The police officer jerked his head to the side; Jared’s fist whistled harmlessly past the cop’s ear. The other one pulled a nightstick and smacked Jared in the shoulder with it. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to get his attention.
“Bad idea, my friend,” the cop advised softly. “You don’t strike us as the average street punk, but even uptown guys know better than to try to clock a cop.”
Not this uptown guy, Jared thought furiously. I’ve already bashed one cop around tonight, boys, don’t push your luck. Then he shouted, “But it’s me! It’s my fault! I’m the one who—” He struggled to go after Kara again, but both cops locked their arms around him and held him back, with some difficulty.
“We gotta take your statement anyway, sir,” the other one said. “You can come down and straighten everything out.” His voice was brisk and oddly soothing, a voice trained to calm individuals and control crowds. “And you want to do that, right?”
“I can’t let them keep her, put her in a cage …”
“Then we better get going, huh? Now, we can arrest you for assault and haul you in that way, or you gonna be a good boy and follow us in your car? You do have a car here, right? Okay. What’s it going to be?”
“Trouble,” he said shortly. “That’s what it’s going to be.” He shrugged free of their restraining arms and started for the door. “I’ll see you boys there.”
“You will, of course, obey all city traffic ordinances on the way,” the cop said, and his partner laughed.
Chapter 13
She couldn’t even wave good-bye, he thought darkly, pulling into the police station parking lot, thanks to the goddamned handcuffs.
For that matter, he hadn’t even known her last name until she’d announced it to the cops. Announced it! God!
She must have been planning this all along, he thought, stomping up the steps. She had known, somehow, that one of the bad guys was a cop. Let him bash the guy around. Planned to take the heat for it, turn herself in, testify against Carlotti. And his contribution to this plan was to blithely announce he needed to buy condoms. He almost groaned thinking about it.
A police dog, a husky German shepherd, snarled at him on his way to the desk. Jared snarled back and the dog blinked, surprised. A busy night at the 110th precinct, Dr. Jared Dean found himself marching past various drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, and burglars, all protesting to different police officers, in various tones of voice, that they had been framed.
He stopped before the desk sergeant; miraculously, there was no line. “It was all me!” he proclaimed loudly to the room. “I’m the guy who hit the cop with the pail. I request—no, I demand that you arrest me in Kara’s place. And let me post bail for her! Right now!”
The desk sergeant, an attractive blonde with eyes almost as pretty as Kara’s, eyed him with no change of expression, then said, “Fine, thanks. And you?”
Jared held out his hands, wrists together. “Arrest me! Book me, Danno! I am guilty, I am scum, I am—”
“Guilty scum?”
“But first, how much to bail Kara Jayne Jones out?”
“Have a seat, I’ll look into this for you.”
“No, you have to arrest me, throw the book at me, handcuff me, lock me—”
“Yes, yes, plenty of time for that. Have. A. Seat.”
Cowed—not so much by the woman’s tone of voice as her completely unruffled manner—Jared did. He passed the time by spot-diagnosing the many people in the room, as well as fantasizing about all the things he would say to Kara once he had his hands on her. Thirty-five minutes had passed when the desk sergeant crooked a finger at him. Jared was in front of her in three bounds.
“First,
no charges have been filed against Ms. Jones.”
“What?” Jared could feel his mouth pop open. “But that’s imposs—I mean, great! So when are they taking me away?”
“They aren’t. Yet.” The sergeant—Ristau, the nametag read—gave him a level look and continued. “And a good thing for you, because you can’t be arrested yourself and post bail for somebody. Officer Carl isn’t pressing charges because he really can’t. He didn’t identify himself to you and your girlfriend as a police officer, you apparently honestly believed he was a danger to you, you were obviously not with Carlotti, and the officer in question doesn’t even have a concussion.”
“But I hit him so many times …” Jared heard himself and shut up.
Sergeant Ristau looked smug. “Well, you must be a real lightweight, pal, because they aren’t even keeping him overnight for observation. Says he doesn’t even have a headache.”
In a flash, Jared saw it—it would be much more an embarrassment to the police officer if they did file charges, than if not. How to explain how a mild-mannered—usually—physician got the better of a trained officer of the law? Better to ignore it and hope the situation went away.
“So, your ladyfriend is free to go … for now.”
“Really?” Jared was dazzled. He had no idea the police were so pleasant and flexible. None of the officers he’d run into tonight had even raised their voices, much less tried to slap him around or taken off their pants to show off their butts. It wasn’t much like NYPD Blue.
Ristau lowered her voice. “Some of the detectives know her—know about her, anyway. And we all heard about the Freibur mansion and how that went down. That bust is going to result in a lot of gold shields. Your friend’s a popular girl around here.”
“She’s my fiancée,” he bragged, slinging an elbow against her desk and casually leaning closer. His relief was so great, he felt like swooning. “We’re going to have babies.”
“That’s nice. Anyway, you and Ms. Jones can go, but she’s got a meeting at nine-thirty A.M. tomorrow with the district attorney. She gave her ‘word of honor’ that she’d show and I guess the detectives believe her, because she’s free to go. They’re gonna finish processing her and you can pick her up. If she doesn’t show,” Ristau added, gently shoving Jared’s elbow off her desk, “a warrant will be issued for her arrest.”
Another warrant, you mean, he thought, but didn’t say aloud. He had trouble believing this was happening—no assault charges and even though the cops knew who she was, they were letting her go? He had no idea the real world worked this way. Law enforcement was much more pleasant than medicine.
He thanked Sergeant Ristau, then found his way to Holding to wait while they let Kara go. He was allowed in to where the cells were and wasn’t sure what to expect. Scenes from Chained Heat and other women-in-cages movies flashed through his mind, beautiful women dominated by handsome guards, lush female prisoners turning to each other for sensual comfort … he shook his head. The movies couldn’t be completely true.
They weren’t. Instead, he saw no more than a half dozen women in the cell with Kara. She was showing a prostitute how to radically extend her pimp’s index finger the next time he laid a hand on her. “Bend it waaaaaaay back,” she was saying, gently demonstrating, “and whenever he moves, or even says something you don’t like, bend it back a little further. You can actually walk him where you need him to go. But it’ll probably only work once—he’ll never let you near his fingers after that.”
Three other women were poring over last month’s issue of the Glamour Do’s and Dont’s and another one sat by herself in a corner and gazed at Kara with what could only be described as heroine worship. The last woman was sleeping peacefully on the top bunk. Except for the bars, it looked more like a teacher’s lounge than a hotbed of hardened female criminals.
Kara heard his footsteps and looked up. Her eyes widened in surprise, which annoyed him. “What did you think?” he snapped by way of greeting. “I was going to let you sit in jail all night?”
“What are you yelling at me for?” she protested, rising and coming to stand before him as close as the bars would allow. “And what are you doing here?”
“I’m cracking you out of this pokey.” He glared at the janitor, who was quietly sweeping the floor near the door. “And God help anyone who gets in my way.”
Kara rolled her eyes; the janitor didn’t trouble herself to look up.
The tremendous stress of the past few hours caught up with him. “You’re in a lot of trouble, Kara Jayne Jones!” he roared in a tone that brought two of Kara’s cellmates to their feet. “Turning yourself in, trying to take the heat, having to see the D.A. tomorrow—you just wait until I get you home.”
“You sound like my father,” she said, exasperated, but she was doing, he saw with surprise, an awful lot of smiling. Shit, was she really that surprised and pleased he’d come? What did she think, he’d have gone gaily back home to eat leftovers and watch PayPerView while she rotted in prison? Well, rotted in Holding? “Somebody’s father, I mean,” she added. “I don’t remember what mine sounded like.”
“Kara! Will you focus, for Christ’s sake?”
“Her man’s comin’ down hard,” one of the jailed women said to another, not bothering to lower her voice.
He ignored the peanut gallery comment and stuck his finger through the bars, shaking it just under Kara’s nose. “We are getting out of here and going home and … and then you’re in big trouble, a lot of trouble, and you just wait.”
“I wouldn’t keep my finger in her face, I was you,” another woman advised. She mimed cracking the index finger backward.
“Jared, you’re hysterical. Calm down.”
“I am not!” he practically shrieked. Then he decided she was right and forced several calming breaths. He didn’t say another word to her until they were in his car, on the way back to his place, half an hour later.
“Well!” Kara said brightly. She was, he noticed, more relaxed and cheerful than he had ever seen her. She was staring a lengthy prison term in the face and didn’t seem too worried. It was beyond weird. Actually, it was kind of irritating. Didn’t she care that she was leaving him? For about thirty years? “It certainly is a relief to be done with hiding. I’m almost looking forward to meeting the D.A. He’s been this big boogeyman in my mind so long—Yeek!”
She’d said “Yeek!” because he had abruptly pulled over and slammed on the brakes, bringing them to a smoking, sliding stop.
“You’re not,” he growled.
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
“Jared. I’ll meet with the D.A. tomorrow, who will insist I be held over for the grand jury. And I’ll pull some serious jail time for all the hacks.”
“But,” he said patiently, as if she knew none of this, “you stole from the corrupt, the baby rapers and murderers and drug dealers. And gave the money to the people they victimized.”
She smiled sadly. “You’re so adorable, you know that? I’m telling you it doesn’t matter. Rules are rules. I’m going down, Jared. For a long, long time. And you’re letting me go—.”
“The fuck I am.” He could hardly recognize his own voice. That low, dangerous tone wasn’t at all like him. That wasn’t Dr. Dean’s bantering tone. That was the voice of a desperate man driven to great lengths to protect the woman he loved.
She ignored him. “—because I won’t have you waste your life waiting for visiting day. You’ll be old, Jared. Old before your time, old when I get out. I’ll be old, too. It won’t be allowed.”
“You’re right about that. Kara, you have to run. I’ll drive you to the train station or the bus station or the airport or to Chicago where you can disappear or … whatever. You—”
“Jared.”
“—can have every penny in my account for tickets. You don’t—”
“Jared.”
“—deserve jail, not like Carlotti does. All you did was try to stay alive, and dammi
t, you’re not going to jail and that’s final!”
“But I am. And that’s final. Jared. My darling, my only—” Her voice caught, then firmed, then went rock steady. “I’m done with running. It’s like banging your head against the wall—it feels so good when you stop.”
“I’ll—I’ll do something—something really terrible to you if you don’t come with me to the airport, right now.”
She looked at him and dared to smile. “No,” she said softly, sweetly. “You won’t. You love me. You’d never hurt me. Don’t you see? That’s why this is so hard. You’re making it hard. Poor Jared. I warned you. Never say I didn’t warn you.”
He was silent. She was right. She had tried. She had fought him and their mutual attraction, tried hard to keep it purely business. She had known from the beginning that he meant despair and heartbreak to her and she to him. She had tried to tell him; he’d been too infatuated to listen.
He put the car in gear and pulled back out into traffic.
Chapter 14
“I know that look,” she teased. They had entered his apartment, hung up their coats, and Jared had silently fixed Kara a light supper. They were doing dishes now, shoulder to shoulder at the sink. It had been, to put it mildly, a long day.
Jared found it somewhat unbelievable that they were doing something so undramatic and domestic as the dishes. But he had to do something with his hands. He was too emotionally exhausted to think about anything else at this point. “You’re thinking about bashing me with a pail,” Kara continued, “and hiding me somewhere so I miss my appointment tomorrow.”
He coughed and hoped like hell he wasn’t blushing. That had been exactly what he was thinking. Trouble was, he’d need something along the lines of an army tank to stop Kara—he supposed he could inject her with a sedative from his bag while she slept, but the chances of doing that and a) not getting his arm broken, and b) maintaining his self-respect, were slim.
“You could never pull it off,” she said kindly, as if reading his mind. Sad, really, that she seemed to know him as well as he felt he knew her. Knowledge that should have thrilled them had come too late. “You’d never do it. You’re too nice.”