“Katherine Anne Wechter, what have you done now?” Her brother asked this in his thunder-court voice, the tone that made criminals cower and bailiffs grin and judges widen their eyes. His sister had heard it all her life, and it made her roll hers.
“Simmer down, D.A., which I’ve decided stands for Dickless Ass—”
“Don’t say it.” He looked around the parking ramp. “Why in the world did you drag me to your—” He fell silent as he heard the furious thumping coming from his sister’s trunk.
As they got closer to her Mustang, they could hear muffled commands—”Help! Police! Anybody! Kidnapping! Help! Call a fireman! Get the jaws of life!”
Kat whacked the trunk with her fist. “Quiet in there. You’ll use up your oxygen and suffocate.”
A furious volley of kicks, followed by—”You bitch! You … you sneaky kissing robotic weird nutso psychotic kidnapping whack job!”
Her brother’s blond brows shot up and he tried to loom over her, another trick that had never worked. “Kissing?”
She waved it away. “It’s probably the fumes. He’s delirious.”
“Kat, what have you done?” He asked this in the tone she liked best: the tone of a broken man. And he used her nickname, which he almost never did. The entire family, from her mother down to Great Uncle Daniel, hated her nickname. Leftovers from a bad night, they thought. Given to her by the Bad Man who tried to do things to her, him and his friends.
Her true name, she had secretly thought, from that night and forever more. A Kat, not a kitty to be coddled and petted. A Kat. Kat, complete with claws and teeth.
“I captured a car thief. Now you can arrest him.”
“Arrest him? I’m not a cop, darling little slightly dim sister.”
“Well, we’re kind of flying by the seat of our pants.”
“You captured a thief?” His brows crinkled together into one big blond angry eyebrow. “You actually grabbed a strange man and stuffed him into the trunk of your car and drove him to my office?”
Whap-whap-whap from the trunk. “She seduced me first! Vile betrayer!”
“Katherine …”
“Don’t worry, Tom. You worry way too much. I had it all under control.” She decided not to mention leaping onto the hood. Or much of what followed. She leaned forward and whispered, “I’ll unlock it and you grab him while he’s disoriented.”
“Wait—”
Click. The trunk swung open. They both stared down at the addled thief, who had both hands clamped over his eyes. “Help!” he yelled. “Kidnappers afoot!”
“See?” Kat said triumphantly. It was too bad, because he was really a fabulous-looking man, but the law was the law—he had to go. “I got him. Now you get him.”
Her brother had bent over to get a good look at the hardened thug. “Katherine …”
“I told you,” she told the thief. “Crime doesn’t pay. It’s practically my family’s motto.” My boring, staid, low-risk family.
The thief’s hands lowered slowly and he blinked painfully at them. “Other than my mother’s funeral, this is possibly the worst day of my life.”
Her brother was still staring. She wasn’t surprised. The whole family coddled her, ever since The Thing That Happened When She Was A Teenager. Like she couldn’t take care of herself—a woman in her late twenties! Like she couldn’t handle anything some car thief yo-yo threw at her.
“Oh God, Katherine, Katherine, what have you done now?”
“Made the streets safer once again,” she said, trying not to overdose on the triumph.
Her big brother was cringing inside his suit jacket, seeming to lose weight before her eyes. She was afraid, for a moment, that he was going to fall into the trunk with the car thief.
Finally, he asked, “Chester McNamara?” in a doom-laden voice.
The thief squinted at him. “Oh. Hi, Tom.”
!!!!!!!!
She gasped like a landed trout, before managing to spit out, “You two know each other?”
“Detective McNamara, this is my sister, Katherine Wechter. Katherine, this is Detective McNamara.”
She leaned against her car so as not to fall into the trunk.
Chapter 5
“You are not.”
“I am.”
“No.”
“Yes, I really very am.”
She hid her face. “No.”
“Yup.”
“So I take it, your cover, she is blown,” her brother said in an awful fake accent.
“I’m not sure. I was supposed to be at the shop with a lister, ah”—he squinted at his watch—”half an hour ago.”
“A lister?” she couldn’t help asking.
“It’s an A-list of desirable cars to steal,” Tom answered absently. “Bad guys put in orders just like you do when you order a car from a lot.”
“And somebody wanted a Ford Mustang?”
“Sure,” the thief—er, Chester—said. “Happens all the time.”
“So when you said it was a matter of life and death …”
“Sure. Mine. I mean, if I don’t show up, my cover’s blown and they’ll track me down and shoot me in the face. If I show up, they might figure out I’m an undercover cop and shoot me in the face. If—”
“Enough with the shooting in the face!” Kat realized she’d been cringing on her trunk and abruptly stood. “Okay. Let’s figure this out.”
Chester and Tom looked at each other, then at her. “This is police business, Katherine,” her brother began in that so irritating tone. “You—”
“Kathhhhherrrrinnnnnne,” Chester teased.
“Shut up, Chester. Staying away isn’t an option?”
Her brother rubbed the throbbing vein between his eyes. Hee! She loved when that happened. “We’re not having this conversation with a civilian.”
“Hey, at least one of us isn’t a scum-spewing lawyer.”
“What did Mom tell you about that?” he whined.
“Baby.”
“Risk-taker.”
“Suit.”
“Psycho.”
“Uh, Wechter siblings? Simmer down.” Chester was looking between them both with not a little wariness in his eyes. “I think we can safely say, due to your assault on a police officer and subsequent kidnapping of same—”
“You were stealing my car!”
“—that the case is fucked at any rate. Capiche?”
“All the lawful owners would have gotten their property back,” her brother said in that snotty tone she despised. Her brother was born with a ramrod up his butt; she wondered how their mother managed to change his diapers. Hell, he probably changed them himself.
“There isn’t anything you can do? And by the way, you can’t cry kidnapping if you didn’t show me I.D.”
“She’s on to us,” Chester stage-whispered to her brother.
“Goddammit! Nine months of undercover down the drain because you picked my sister’s car?”
“Hey, it was on the list.”
“That make and model?”
“And the license plate.”
Her brother scowled, obviously mulling that one over, when Kat piped up, “Well, let’s give it to them.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You’re going to chuck all that budget money down the drain? Oh, the voters’ll love that.”
Her brother cringed. “Leave that to me,” he said with a complete lack of conviction.
“Where were you supposed to drop the car off?”
“Stop!” her brother screamed, his fair face flushing the color of a ripe beet.
“Chop shop in the warehouse district.”
“What part of ‘Stop!’ are you not getting, Detective?”
“I don’t work for you,” she pointed out.
“You’re not too big to spank,” Thomas growled back.
She ignored him, as she had most of her life, and turned to Chester and his pea green eyes. “Well, how many can there be?”
“What??
??
“Chop shops. I mean, this is Minneapolis. Hardly a hotbed of crime.”
She slammed the trunk shut, snatched the keys out of the lock, and climbed into the driver’s seat. She started the car, and glared at the two men who were gaping after her. “Well?” she demanded. “You coming?”
Her brother actually stamped his foot. “No.”
“Uh.”
“Chester. No.”
“Uh … it might work.”
“You’ll both get a bullet in the face for your trouble.”
“What is this obsession with bullets and faces?” Kat bitched.
“I said might work.” Chester touched his mouth. “Ummm. How come you never mentioned you had a crazy gorgeous sister?”
“For obvious reasons, McNamara, and just forget it.”
“And let her go out there alone? It’s almost dark.”
“At least let me—” But McNamara was gone, long legs scissoring into the passenger side. He put out a hand and gave Tom the—Was that the … ? Did he dare to … ? No, that was a thumbs up. “Cheer up!” he called as she squealed out of the parking space, ruffling her brothers three-hundred-dollar Men’s Wearhouse suit. “We’ll think of something.” “I’m telling Mom!” Thomas called after the Mustang, and she flashed its lights in saucy reply.
Chapter 6
“I know why I’m doing this,” Chester said, “but why in the world are you doing this? You’re not a cop. You’re a—What are you?”
“A boring rich person. No day job.”
“Thus the sweet car.”
“Thus.” She took an illegal left and scooted up into the right-hand turn lane. “Warehouse district, coming up.”
“So why are you doing this? I mean, any sane woman would have let me take her car. Especially a rich sane woman. But you kidnapped me and drove me to the D.A. And now you’re driving me back to the bad guys.”
“Thanks for the re-cap. Because I wasn’t, you know, standing right there or anything.”
“I’ve been working with your brother for over a year. He never mentioned anything about you. Specifically, I mean.” Chess cringed as she squealed around a corner. She was—almost—a better driver. Certainly more reckless. “Just that his folks were still together and he had six brothers and sisters.”
“Sheep,” Kat muttered.
“What?”
“Sheep. They’re very risk averse.”
“You mean they’re sane and sensible.”
“Boring and overprotective.”
“Well, rich people usually are.”
“I’m the only one who’s rich.”
“How come?”
“Civil lawsuit in my favor,” she replied shortly, neglecting to put on her turn signal as she took a right. “Tons of money I’ll never use.”
“And you’re—” Bracing himself on the dashboard: “Yellow light yellow light yellow fucking light!”
“Will you calm down? How can an undercover cop have nerves of spaghetti?”
“Bad guys don’t scare me.”
She quirked a dark brow at him and he determinedly ignored the stiffening in his pants. His balls still throbbed, but in a much more interesting way. “How about bad girls?”
“Mmmmph.”
“So it’s Detective Chester—”
“Chess, please, if you love me.”
“It’s a little soon for—”
“Left, left, left!”
She swung left, ignored the squealing brakes behind her, and swung into the parking lot of a block-wide city garage.
“Okay,” he panted, clutching his chest. “You stay here. I’ll tell them it took a while to find the car they wanted, but I’ve got it now. You’ll—”
“I’m coming with.”
“The hell.”
“But I am.”
“The. Hell.”
“Then why did you let me drive?”
“Because you’ve got the reflexes of a marmoset,” he complained.
“Look, Chess, my days of sitting on the sidelines like a rabbit are over. You have a lot better chance of walking out there without getting shot if I’m some slut you picked up on the way.”
“Why would I pick up some slut on the way?”
“Because crooks are stupid.”
He acknowledged that with a silent nod. He’d lost track of how many busts had happened with the ease of closing a door, simply because the perp was, well, an idiot.
“You don’t look like a slut.”
She shook her hair until it stood out wildly in all directions, gypsy’s hair. She reached into her purse, pulled out a slim silver tube, and glossed her mouth an even, glistening carmine red. She pulled off her sweater, revealing a black jogging bra. She wriggled out of her jeans, revealing workout leggings with lace cuffs in the same fuck-me red as her lipstick.
“How about now?” she asked, grinning at him in the gloom.
“Buh,” he replied, or at least that’s what he thought he said.
She jammed an apple-sized piece of gum into her mouth and began to masticate. “The final touch,” she drooled with her mouth full.
Meanwhile, Chess had recovered his wits enough to get out, come around the front of the car, and open the door for her. She was wearing bronze-colored kitten heels which brought out the gold flecks in her black eyes—Wait a minute. Earlier he had thought her eyes had no color at all, and now they were, what? Sparkling?
“This is fucked up,” he muttered.
She snapped her gum in reply.
“Your brother is going to lock me at the bottom of a cold, dark hole for the next fifty years.”
She blew a bubble the size of her head, sucked it in, then clicked into the garage in her cute bronze shoes. “Hi!” she said. “Are you Manny’s friends?”
There were several clangs as tools were dropped all over the garage.
Chapter 7
I am in love, Chester McNamara, Detective Second Grade, thought, watching Kat’s tight ass wiggle in front of him. So, so in love. Not because of the killer bod. And I can overlook the annoying gum snapping. No, I’m in love because she kneed me in the nads, kidnapped me, ratted me out to the D.A., then relented and drove me to the pit of all evil to keep me from getting killed, which I probably will be anyway.
Then: Manny?
Boss Jack, a willowy man with skin the color of cream cheese, a man who could have played professional basketball if he’d shown the slightest interest in anything but crime, ambled out of the cube of his office and approached them. “You’re late.”
“Sorry, boss.”
“Not like you at all.”
“I, uh …” He jerked a thumb at Kat, who was cooing over a line of Michelins. “I ran into an old friend I haven’t known very long.”
Kat was running a hand over the dark tires. “They smell so rubbery!”
“You made a date you forgot about?” Boss Jack smiled, a warm, friendly smile which was usually the last thing a victim saw before the world exploded in brains and blood. “It’s not like you to double book.”
“Naw. A date I just—You know. Had to go for. I mean, right that minute.” A date I had no choice in. A terrifying, gorgeous date who kidnapped me.
“I question your judgment in bringing her here.”
That makes two of us. “Why?” he duhhed.
“And these … What do you call these?” Kat was oohing. “They’re so shiny!”
“Hubcaps,” one of the mechanics piped up helpfully.
“Ummm.” Boss Jack stroked his close-cropped beard—two shades darker than the white-blond hair on his head—and studied Kat, who was bent at the waist, peering into the pit. The mechanics were staring up at her cleavage, entranced. Then, “Manny?”
“Well. Had to tell her something.”
Kat was waving down into the pit. “Hi, down there!”
From below, a cheerful chorus—”Hi, up there!” Other than stripping engines and moving parts out the door, Chess figured this was the most excite
ment these guys probably had in a year.
“You brought what I want?” Boss Jack continued.
“Huh?” Chess had been more than a little entranced himself. “Oh, the ’Stang! Yep, it’s right outside.”
“Not just any Mustang. That Mustang. Yes?”
“Sure.” Chess didn’t think much of the request at the time; sometimes people arranged to have their own cars stolen, or a relative’s. That wasn’t likely in Kat’s case, but now that he had a chance to give it some thought, why would Boss Jack want Kat’s car? She sure didn’t want someone to take it, and he doubted her goody-goody family wished grand theft auto on her, either. As for her stick-in-the mud brother, he had the contacts, sure. But the motive? Nuh-uh.
“Very good,” Jack continued. Uh-oh, Chess thought. Better pay attention. “At least you haven’t lost all your faculties.” Boss Jack motioned to a man loitering by the garage wall. “Bring in, ah, Manny’s car, will you?”
“Aren’t you scared the car will fall on you?” Kat asked the pit crew, absently—or artfully—twirling a curl around one long finger. She was bent over so far, Chess worried she might fall in herself.
“You’ve done well, Manny.”
“Huh?”
“Seventeen cars in twelve days. And the only time you dropped off the radar was this afternoon.”
“Yeah, but, boss …” He gestured as Kat squatted over the pit. “Look at her!”
“And you told her …?”
“That I was dropping a car off for a friend, and that we’d go out drinking after. She thinks the transmission’s shot or something.”
“You doubtless could have told her the fifth wheel was flat and she wouldn’t have minded.”
“Yeah, but … you get a look at her ass?”
Boss Jack grinned. Chester grinned back. And suddenly, he didn’t want to be playing this game anymore. Fine, Kat had—probably—saved his life. Or at least the case, which he and her brother had been building for eleven months. But she was practically prostituting herself to do it, and that was just plain fucked up. God, if her brother could see her now, his entire head would pop like an enraged pimple.
The Mustang purred into the garage and, to Chess’s dislike, the garage door ratcheted down right behind it. That was a small breach of protocol. Usually he just walked out the door. What was …