Annie on the Lam: A Christmas Caper (9 page)

“I'll get it,” Joe told her.

“Thanks.”

Annie shut the bathroom door, turned and leaned against it, closed her eyes. Well, this was weird. And awkward. So why did she get a little thrill just thinking about him in the next room? A humming sensation beneath her skin when she thought of sleeping in his bed, beneath his sheets, his scent wrapped around her? Maybe because the men she was used to were nothing like him. A compliment to Joe, she decided.

She sighed and opened her eyes, pushed away from the door. The excitement of the chase earlier had gotten to her, that's all. The fact that they'd almost gone to heaven together—and not in a good way—but at the hand of a burly baboon.

Annie pulled off her skirt, tugged the torn satin blouse over her head. In the mirror, she checked out the scrape on her breast, the bruises already apparent on her shoulder and hip from her fire escape dive. She stretched her sore muscles. Her whole body ached. She would get a few hours of sleep, look through the files with Joe in the morning, and depending upon what they found, take it from there. Whether she found what she expected to or not, she would need to come up with a plan of action. But she couldn't do anything about that tonight. She was too wiped out to think straight.

A knock sounded at the door. “I'm putting the towels and your purse on the floor to the right of the door,” Joe said.

“Thanks,” she called, then waited a beat before reaching for the doorknob. Before she could open up, a thump sounded on the other side of the wall, a clatter, then…

Joe cursed. “I dropped your—”

Some
something
hung in the silence that followed, something ominous that weighed her down with dread. And then she remembered the present Lacy had given her at the Christmas party tonight. Remembered stuffing the box into her purse, it breaking open when she hit Harry.

Burning with embarrassment, Annie winced and opened the door a crack.

Stooped in front of the bathroom, Joe held a tiny square packet between his thumb and forefinger. Along with her keys and lipstick, a stick of gum and a few pennies, at least ten other packets just like the one he held lay scattered about his feet. He lifted his gaze to her face and his eyebrows shot up.

Without thinking, she opened the door wider. “What a mess,” she said, chirping a nervous laugh. “Don't worry about it. I did the same thing earlier. There are twice as many on Harry's office floor.”
Good gawd
. Why had she said that?

But when his eyes shifted upward and settled on the front of her black bikini brief panties she had the distinct impression he hadn't heard a word she'd said. His stare was as hot as a beam of Georgia sunlight in July. He lingered, blinked, trailed his gaze up her belly, stopped at her bra and blinked again.

“Don't worry about it,” Annie repeated, her voice a mere squeak. “My purse latch needs fixing. I'll pick those all up.” If her body temperature rose any higher, she would self-combust.

He rocked a little on the balls of his feet, then stood with the packet in one hand, a towel in the other. His Adam's apple bobbed. “Here,” he said, and held both items out toward her.

She took them.

The phone rang. They jumped. Joe cleared his throat then turned and left the room.

Annie dropped to her knees, scooped everything into her purse, backed into the bathroom and closed the door. She braced both hands on the sink and stared at herself in the mirror. If her heart beat any harder and louder, the police would show up all right, but not because she'd stolen Harry's files. They would arrest her for disturbing the peace.

 

J
OE HEADED
for the cordless phone on the nightstand beside his bed, wondering who in the hell would be calling at this hour.

And thinking about Annie.

Why would one woman carry around so many condoms in her purse? He laughed silently at his stupid question.
Sweet tea. Yeah, right
.
With a couple of shots of bourbon in it.
She had looked about as sweet and innocent as a centerfold model when she opened that bathroom door. Hair wild, cheeks flushed, nipples beaded against that black satin bra.

He reached the nightstand and lifted the phone, punched Talk. “Brady here.”

“Why haven't you called?”

SMACK
. Joe felt as if he'd stepped on the tracks in front of a speeding train. Nothing like lusting for a woman while talking to her father. Especially when the father was a paying client.

He couldn't get out of the bedroom fast enough.

Relieved to hear the shower come on in the bathroom, he took the phone and started into the living room.

“Where's my daughter?” The frantic tone of Milford Macy's voice had Joe hastening his step. “I've been calling her apartment half the night. Yours, too. Your cell isn't working.”

“The battery died. Relax. Your daughter is with me,” Joe said quietly, one eye on the closed bedroom door as he sat on the couch.

“Did something happen? God almighty as my witness, if one hair on my daughter's head is out of place you'll be sorry as a two-dollar bill. Is she—?”

“Look,” Joe said, recalling with chagrin how tousled Annie's hair had looked when he'd left her moments ago. “Slow down. I'm on your side, remember? She's fine. And before you start threatening me, you might want to keep in mind that I'm doing you a favor.”

“A favor? I'm paying you—”

“To follow her, not babysit, which is what I've ended up doing.”

The old man's sigh traveled clearly across the line. “Is Annie okay?”

“Like I said, she's fine. But you were right to worry about Landau. He chased her out of the building right into my cab.”

“He—why?”

“She stole files from his office.”

A pause, then, “Lord have mercy…that girl. Thank God you were there. She probably would have gone straight to her place and Landau would've been right behind her.”

Joe cleared his throat. “We did go to her apartment.” He relayed all that had happened since then, stopping before he reached the part where he dropped Annie's purse and she opened his bathroom door in her underwear.

“Thank heaven she's okay.” Another pause. “You haven't told her about our arrangement, have you?”

“As far as she knows, I'm only a cab driver and an ex-cop who was in the right place when she needed a quick escape.”

“Good. Keep it that way. She'd never forgive me if she knew the truth. Of course, her safety is my greatest concern, but there's more than one way to lose someone, and I don't want that to happen, either.”

In the space of silence that followed, Joe thought of Annie's mother and felt certain the old man did, too. Had Macy done something he regretted that had driven his wife into Frank Reno's arms?

“She thinks you're a cab driver who picked her up, yet she's spending the night at your apartment,” the old man muttered in a weary, disbelieving tone. “I don't know what has gotten into her. She's always had an impulsive streak, but this goes beyond that. She's behaving just like her mother. And now she's mixed up with that son-of-a-bitch like her mother was, too.”

Joe heard the ring of raw fear in the older man's voice. “She's safer trusting me right now than she would be on her own in some hotel room and she knows it. What else would you have wanted her to do?”

“Catch the first flight home, that's what.”

“After midnight? I doubt seriously she could've found one.”

“Well, see that she does in the morning. And I don't want her out of your sight until she's on the plane, do you understand?”

“I'll try to talk her into going home, but I can't force her to. She's a headstrong woman.”

“You think I don't know that? Do whatever it takes. Hogtie her and haul her onto the plane yourself if you have to, I don't care, just make sure she's safe.”

“Mr. Macy…I might be crossing a line here, but why can't we just tell her the truth? She's an adult and I'm not much of an actor. When she realizes you were concerned enough about her safety to hire me, I bet she'll go home just to ease your mind.”

Macy released a raspy chuckle. “You obviously don't know Annie. Even in light of the trouble she's in, she'd be furious with me for having her followed.”

And furious at me for lying to her, Joe thought. He didn't like deceiving anyone for money. It wasn't his style. And he really didn't want to break his promise to himself and be the one responsible for her.

“I'm willing to pay you a bonus for seeing that my daughter returns to Georgia safely,” Macy said, then quoted a figure.

Joe winced. The sum would easily pay for a deposit on a better place for his mother, as well as her moving expenses, with plenty left over. What the hell. Sometimes good reasons justified compromising integrity. And he could let Anne Macy in on at least some of the truth without betraying her father. If the two of them were going to get to the bottom of whatever was in those files, it might be easier if she knew certain things about his past.

“Okay,” Joe said reluctantly. “I'll see that she gets safely home to you.”

“What about those files?” Macy asked.

Joe heard the shower turn off in the next room. “We'll have to talk about that later. I think she's coming.”

After ending the call, Joe sat back and stared at the bedroom door. For the briefest of seconds, he imagined Annie Macy stepping out of the shower naked and slick from the spray. He ordered the image out of his mind, told it to stay out. Now more than ever, she was definitely off-limits.

He glanced at the kitchen clock. 4:00 a.m. Even so, he had a feeling that the few remaining hours of the night would be long and restless.

Annie
dried off from head to toe before wrapping the towel turban-style around her wet hair. She found a tube of toothpaste in the medicine cabinet, squirted some onto her finger and made do. Finishing, she grabbed Joe's terry-cloth robe from the hook on the door, slipped it on, took her purse and exited the bathroom.

She found him in the living room sitting on the couch. When he looked up at her, she saw the same dark desire in his eyes that had been there before the phone rang. Yet there was a hint of restraint in the set of his jaw, in his body language.

She crossed to him, set her purse on the end table. “Is something wrong?”

His gaze skimmed the front of the robe before resting on her face. “No, I'm just beat. Why?”

“The phone call.”

“Oh…yeah. Wrong number.” He stared at her a moment. “You need anything? Another pillow? A heavier blanket?”

She shook her head. “I know I should be comatose considering all we've been through, but I'm still too wound up to sleep.”

“I can't sleep, either.” He gestured toward the briefcase. “Might not be a bad idea to go ahead and take a look at those files.”

She took a comb from her purse. “Why are you helping me? All it's brought you is trouble.” Sitting at the opposite end of the couch, a safe chaste distance from him, she pulled the towel off her head and began using the comb to slowly work the tangles from her hair.

“I'd like to say I'm just being a nice guy. And I was at first.” He paused to smile at her. “But now that you've told me a few things, I also have other reasons.” He steepled his hands in his lap and stared down at his fingers. “I was a narcotics officer. A year ago, I was working undercover to take down a drug ring headed up by a guy named Frank Reno.”

“Oh my God,” Annie whispered.

He looked up at her. “I take it you know him?”

“He's Harry's uncle. They own Landau's together.”

Joe nodded.

Annie's heart rate kicked up. “Out of all the cab drivers in New York City, I climb in with you?” She realized she sounded like Mac, screwing up a movie quote, this time from
Casablanca
. She shook her head. “You're telling me that you were investigating a crime that might possibly be connected to the one I'm looking into now? And you just happen to be sitting in your cab—”

“It's not as big a coincidence as you might think. I'm still investigating Reno, just on my own time now. That's why I was sitting outside Landau's tonight. I keep an eye out for Reno and Landau whenever I can.”

Suddenly it made sense to her. “That's why you stuck with me. I mean, at the diner and everything. And why you were so nosy. You knew that was Harry Landau chasing me even before I said his name.”

He nodded again.

“And though you didn't know what I'd done at first, or that it might be connected to your case, you helped me because you knew he was bad news and I might be in real trouble.” She tightened the robe sash, studied him. “You
are
a nice guy.”

“Yeah, well…” He shifted and looked away, as if uncomfortable with her compliment. “I just wanted to make sure you got home safely and that he wasn't there waiting for you.”

Making an effort to calm her breathing, Annie asked, “Why did you quit the police force?”

He leaned forward, leveling his forearms on his knees. “Things were moving along. We'd finally found what we needed to lock Reno up. A witness willing to testify against him. An insider named Emma Billings. Me, my partner O'Malley and another detective named Clayton Jones covered her twenty-four-seven. She insisted she stay at her own place, so we took the shifts ourselves. We weren't taking any chances that Reno's people might get to her to shut her up before the trial started.”

The muscle along Joe's jawline twitched.

Annie laid the comb aside, dread sweeping through her.

“She had a fifteenth-floor apartment,” he continued. “A nice place. Only one door in and out. I still can't figure out what happened that night. I had other things on my mind. I'd noticed a mix-up in some records earlier that day. Discrepancies in the reported amount of dope and money we'd seized on an earlier bust.” He shook his head. “Maybe I was too distracted by all that. I had the midnight-to-eight shift at Miss Billings' place, and I always came on duty a few minutes early to get a cup of coffee from the kitchen and shoot the breeze with O'Malley before he left. We both talked to her before he took off, let her know the shift was changing. After he'd gone, I didn't leave the front room except once to refill my cup. There's no way someone could've got past me.”

“But someone did,” she whispered, seeing the truth in his eyes.

“Miss Billings was gagged and cut up a little. Terrorized. Right there in her own bed with me in the next room. Whoever did it knocked me out cold. I never saw or even heard him coming.”

Annie saw a mix of anger and anguish tug at his face. “Did they fire you over it?”

“No. There was an inquiry. O'Malley and I were both checked out. Jones, too. I was suspected of everything from being drunk or drugged that night to sleeping on the job to sleeping with Miss Billings.”

“Were you?”

“No.” He looked at her straight on without so much as a blink. “It was all speculation. No evidence surfaced to prove any of us were negligent that night. Basically I got a slap on the wrist and a long vacation with no pay.” He snagged a hand through his hair. “I couldn't go back, though. Not until I straightened everything out about that night in my mind. That still hasn't happened.”

“What about Miss Billings? Did she testify?”

“She took the stand. But she changed her testimony. Said she didn't know anything. That she'd been mistaken. Reno walked, as usual, and she left the country.”

“I'm sorry, Joe.”

“Me, too. For Emma Billings most of all. She was in bad shape emotionally. Wouldn't surprise me if she never gets over it.”

“And you don't have any idea at all how someone might've gotten to her?”

“I have part of the puzzle, just not all of it,” he told her. “Earlier that evening, before my shift started, O'Malley said she had insisted on getting out of the apartment for some air. He said there was no stopping her so he took her out for an hour. We figure that's when the intruder had to have broken into her place and hid. But there were no signs of breaking and entering.”

They sat silently for several minutes. Annie didn't know what to say to him. He was trusting her completely, not holding anything back. She wanted to completely trust him, too, to tell him everything about Frank Reno and her mother. Yet a little part of her held onto that piece of information. It was too personal, too painful. In the long run, she didn't see how his knowing about it could further their, now mutual, cause.

“
Lucy
,” Mac squawked, ruffling his feathers, “
you've got some 'splaining to do
.”

Huffing and shaking his head, Joe stood. “On second thought, let's save whatever's in those files. Even if we don't sleep, we should try to get some rest. No telling what we'll be faced with tomorrow.”

Annie didn't argue. She saw the weariness in his face, and knew that telling his story had cost him. She watched him check the front door lock and the window latches, then followed him into the bedroom where he checked those window latches, too.

“Do you mind if I borrow a T-shirt to sleep in?” she asked.

He pulled one with NYPD in bold letters across the front from his top dresser drawer.

“I won't be far,” he said as he turned to leave. “Just in the next room.”

She read the thought that flashed through his eyes; he'd been in the next room when Emma Billings was terrorized, too.

“Would you mind staying in here?” she asked, hugging the T-shirt against her to stop a sudden reoccurrence of the tremors. “I'm still kind of freaked out by everything. I'd rather not be alone.” She wasn't pretending. To say the events of the night had rattled her nerves would be the grossest of understatements. She needed Joe close by as much as he seemed to need to be there.

“Sure,” he said. “The floor is probably more comfortable than my lumpy sofa, anyway.”

 

A
T EIGHT THE NEXT MORNING
, Joe sat at the edge of the bed next to Annie. He'd already been up for a while and had showered, pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt.

Despite the hour, the room remained dark because of the cloud cover outside. Annie lay on her stomach beneath the covers, her face toward him, her hands under the pillow. A few minutes ago, the ringing telephone had not even caused her to stir.

The apartment's old radiator didn't generate much heat. Joe thought she must be cold wearing only his T-shirt with nothing but a sheet and a blanket covering her impossibly long legs. He knew they were long because he'd opened an eye and peeked when she walked from the bathroom to the bed after changing into his shirt last night.

Joe pushed a pale strand of hair off her cheek. Why did she have to be so damn pretty? And nice. Surprisingly enough, she was that, too. Nice and funny, rash and brave, smart and sweet. He drew a deep breath. She smelled good, too. He had wanted to crawl under the couch last night when she'd called
him
nice. Yeah, he was nice all right. A nice fat liar. “Annie, wake up,” Joe said.

Sighing long and deep, she rolled onto her back. “Hmmm?”

“Wake up. We need to get you out of here.”

Annie frowned and opened her eyes. She pushed up onto her elbows. “What time is it?”

“Just past eight. Dino called a second ago. He's my cousin. He owns the cab. He said a couple of cops just paid him a visit. They were looking for a woman who caught a ride last night in a cab with plates that matched his.”

“The one you were driving?”

“Afraid so. I figure it's you they're looking for. I guess Landau got the tag number and called it in.”

Her eyes flashed distress. “They might be the cops who are working with him.”

“Could be.”

She scooted farther up in the bed and pulled the blanket to her chin. “You think they're coming here?”

“That'd be my guess. Dino didn't realize what's up, obviously. He gave them my name and address. If they're on the up-and-up, I doubt they'll search the place, but just in case they are in on this thing with Landau, you might want to go out the back way.”

He stood and she threw off the covers, climbed from the bed and hurried into the bathroom.

While she dressed, Joe returned to the living room for her coat, purse and Landau's briefcase, then took them into the bedroom. A minute later, Annie exited the bathroom, fully dressed and carrying her boots. He gathered his makeshift pallet off the floor and threw the bedding into his closet.

Annie sat on the bed and tugged a fancy boot on over a plain wool sock. The socks surprised him. He had expected silk stockings. Or hoped for them, anyway.

“It doesn't make sense that Harry would've called the police, does it?” she asked. “Wouldn't he be jeopardizing himself considering what I think I have in this briefcase?”

“Or he's hoping you haven't had time to go through it and find anything to implicate him, so he's not worried. And then there's always the chance that you don't have what you think you do.” Joe closed the closet door and looked back at her. “Look, I'll just be straight with you. As it stands right now, you might be the person in trouble with the law more than Landau. No matter what you suspect of him, the fact is you broke into his office and stole his property.”

Pausing to look up at him, her boot in her hand, Annie said, “I had probable cause.”

“That only comes into play if you're an officer of the law.”

“Do you mean to tell me I committed a crime by taking evidence that will prove my boss is a criminal?”

“That depends on a lot of variables. For instance, did Landau routinely allow you to look at business documents? Were you given free access to his office?” When she didn't answer, he added, “The fact that Landau chased you to get them back indicates ‘no'. Did anyone else see you go in there?”

“I don't think so.”

“Then at least it's your word against his.”

Her expression said what she didn't admit: Before rushing into her boss's office, she didn't stop to consider the consequences. She acted on impulse, driven by the need to avenge her mother, Joe guessed.

“That was nice of your cousin to call and warn me. Does he always go out of his way to help customers he doesn't even know escape the law?”

“It's me he's worried about, not you. He was afraid I might've gotten myself in some kind of bind.”

“You do that often, do you?” She sent him a nervous smile.