Dashing Through the Snow (22 page)

The room was filled with stacks of old
newspapers and magazines, some at least six feet tall. Tam was
nowhere to be seen. Smith took a deep breath. With all of the
stacks filling the room, there were plenty of places for the other
man to hide, worrying Smith. He had no idea if Tam had a weapon or
not. The room is freezing, he thought, brow furrowing. The rest of
the apartment was at normal temperature.

“Of course,” he said in disgust when he
noticed that the window was open, and right outside of it was a
fire escape. “Great, just great.” A narrow path had been carved
between the stacks and he followed it to the window. Of course Lily
was right behind him. He poked his head out the window and looked
down. Tam had already made it to at least the ninth floor. Smith
quickly climbed out onto the fire escape. He didn’t bother to waste
his breath telling Lily to stay behind.

The ancient metal fire escape felt precarious
under his feet. He felt it move slightly as he put his full weight
on it. It was rickety and slick and slippery from the snow and he
stopped, arms thrust out to steady himself and the fire escape. He
began the climb down, going as quickly as circumstances allowed. He
heard Lily clamber on as well and offered up a prayer that she’d be
safe. After he’d gotten to the eighth floor, he heard a hard thump
and the fire escape shook rather violently. Panicked, he looked up,
but Lily was fine. She was slowly making her way between floors
twelve and eleven. Smith looked down. Tam had fallen and was now
trying to rise, but his feet kept sliding out from under him.

Glad for the small advantage, Smith increased
his pace down the stairs a bit. Sudden heat exploded past his ear
and then he heard metal violently drive into metal. He froze. “Gun!
Lily, get down!” he yelled and looked to make sure she had before
doing his best to take cover. Another bullet sounded and holding
tight to the railing, Smith swung his body out so that he was
hanging on the side of the fire escape and his body was partially
blocked, making it more difficult for Tam to find a target.

“Jesus!” Lily yelled. “Smith!”

“I’m fine!” he shouted back. “Just stay
down.” He was losing his grip and he released the rail with one
hand, only to quickly bring it back for a more secure hold. He
swung his legs again so that his feet landed on the windowsill of
someone’s apartment. Bending his knees, he brought both hands to
the railing closest to the sill, and pulled himself completely onto
it.

Tam fired one last time, perhaps in warning
because the bullet went wide, and then Smith heard him running down
the fire escape again.

“Smith! Are you all right?” Lily called again
and he looked up to see her panicked face.

“I’m still fine, sweetness,” he assured her.
“Go back into Tam’s apartment. I’ll be right up.” Only a fool would
chase a man with a gun who was willing to shoot it.

“Hey!” A voice sounded in the darkness. “Take
that shit somewhere else -- idiot! I’ve called the police, so don’t
be thinking you’re getting away with anything around here!”

Smith didn’t even bother trying to figure out
where the voice was coming from. He sighed. “Fuck the police,” he
muttered and started his climb back up, prepared for a long
night.

***

“Oh, I’m so tired,” Lily moaned as she walked
over to the king-sized bed. She took off her coat, tossed it over
the back of a chair and toeing off her shoes, fell backward onto
the bed.

Smith watched her with a worried frown as he
took off his own coat. He took off his gun and put it on the
bureau. They’d just gotten back to their hotel after being grilled
by the police and Lily was acting as if nothing out of the ordinary
had happened. He’d tried to talk to her about how scared she must
have been, but she simply blew him off. In the meantime, Tam had
disappeared into the ether and they had no idea how they were going
to find him. Additionally, they still had to meet with Landry’s
mistress. Smith looked at his watch. They could afford about a
forty-five minute nap. He took off his own boots and padded over to
the bed.

He walked to the head and pulled the blanket
and top sheet back. Climbing on behind her, he grabbed Lily beneath
her arms and dragged her to the head of the bed. He lay next to her
and she immediately turned towards him and curled into his body. He
adjusted the blanket and sheet to cover them.

“Mmm, thank you,” she murmured sleepily. “I
thought the police would never let us leave. They practically
accused you of doing the shooting.”

“They were just doing their job. You want to
talk about the shooting now?” He sighed when she shook her head,
causing her hair to brush against his chin. He squeezed her when
she pressed closer. “All right, then. If you won’t talk to me about
that, I want to know why you don’t have a gun.”

She shrugged. “I haven’t found one that I
like yet.”

“I can help you find one. What are you basing
your decision on? Weight? Range? Trigger?”

“No,” she murmured as she buried her nose in
his neck. “Color.”

“
What?”
Sure he hadn’t heard her
correctly; Smith sat up and turned on the light. “What did you
say?”

Lily had flung her arm over her eyes to block
out the strong light. “Smith!”

“Did you just say that you’re basing such an
important decision as buying a gun on something as trivial as
color
?”

Lily sighed as if the weight of the world
were on her shoulders. “Yes,” she said defiantly and sat up. “Yes,
I did. What difference does it make?”

Mystified, Smith could only stare at her for
a moment before shaking his head. “Baby, color should be the least
of your worries.”

“I beg to differ. I haven’t done a lot of
research on the matter, but what I’ve seen of guns so far is very
unattractive. I haven’t found any that I like.”

Fascinated by the way her mind worked, Smith
again found himself speechless for a moment as he stared at her.
Being shot at earlier while she was with him had really brought the
issue of her safety home to him. He rose to get his gun.

He brought it over and sat at her hip. “Here,
this is my gun. It’s a Sig Sauer P226 9 millimeter.” He laid it
flat in the palm of his hand and lifted it a few times in the air.
“See? It’s not too light, but it’s not at all heavy.”

Lily stared at the gun and slowly reached her
hand out. “Oooooh,” she cooed as she rubbed her finger tips across
the barrel. “Shiny.”

Smith scowled and slapped lightly at her
hand.

“Hey!”

The scowl deepened. “
Shiny
?”

“Yes, Smith,” she said patiently. “It’s all
very silvery and shiny. I like it.”

Mystified, all Smith could do was shake his
head again. “I simply keep it clean, as any responsible gun owner
would. Now, pay attention, Lil. Sig Sauer makes a great gun. I
almost got the P226 Navy, but I --”

“Navy? They have it in navy? Do you think I
could get it in green? Not a forest green, but more like an aqua or
a grass–”

“No, Lily,” Smith said as patiently as he
could. “You keep talking like that, and you’ll be drummed out of
the profession. Navy refers to
Navy SEALS
. The Navy SEALS
use --” He stopped, finally noticing the smug look on her face.
“I’m wasting my breath, aren’t I?”

“Pretty much, yeah. Don’t worry about me,
cowboy. I already know the weight and size I want, but the color
matters to me as well. It doesn’t have to be anything flashy and of
course I just want the butt of it to be a nice color, not the
entire gun. Now put your peacemaker away, baby,” she said as she
patted his cheek, “And let’s get some sleep.”

Chapter Nineteen

Lily awoke to a dark, empty room. She could
tell that Smith was no longer in bed with her and stretched and
rolled over. “Smith,” she called. There was no answer and she sat
up to turn on the light. She sensed that he was nowhere in the
suite and frowned before looking at her watch. “I am
so
going to kill him!” She’d been asleep for two hours. She supposed
she could follow him, but knew that if the interview weren’t
already over, it would be by the time she got there. Muttering to
herself, she rose from the bed and headed toward the connecting
bath.

An hour later she’d showered, done a little
research on her laptop and had eaten the dinner she’d ordered from
room service. She was dressed and refreshed and was heading out the
door. “I need to clear my head. He’ll get his after.”

***

Smith made his way along Michigan Avenue,
amazed at how crowded the street still was even at eight o’clock at
night with a temperature hovering around thirty degrees. “People
are nuts,” he said under his breath. He had to admit, though, that
it was a gorgeous city, especially lit up as it was for Christmas.
He came upon the Art Institute and stopped in front of it for a
moment. There were still people hanging out on the stairs. Others
were taking pictures with the two majestic – even with ridiculously
huge wreaths around their necks – concrete lions that guarded the
neoclassical building, something Lily had described as being in the
Beaux-Arts style earlier that day.

He kept walking, dreading yet looking forward
to Lily’s anger over being left behind. “She’s probably so pissed
that she can’t see straight.” Coming upon Millennium Park, he was
not surprised to find it teeming with people. The ice skating rink
in the park was packed as well. His eye caught sight of a tall,
slim figure dressed entirely in white – leggings, bubble jacket,
beret and from the cowl neck he saw hugging her neck above the
collar of the jacket, a big, fluffy sweater. She glided gracefully
across the ice, seemingly lost in her own world. She stood out from
the rest of the skaters, and not just because of the white. Smith
stared at Lily, caught up in how smoothly she moved. “Gotta be all
those years of ballet.”

He walked over to sit on one of the benches
that flanked one side of the rink, joining other spectators with
their cups of hot drinks. He kept his eye on her as she skated
twice more around. On her third go-around, he stood and walked over
to lean over the thick, waist-high glass that separated the rink
from the sidewalk. He called out to her. “Hey, sweetness. You look
damned good on those skates.”

She cut her eyes at him as she approached
him. And then to his amusement, said, “Piss off.”

Apparently he wasn’t the only one paying
attention. “Sure is a funny way to say season’s greetings,” a lanky
teen boy with bangs in his eyes and braces on his teeth said
disinterestedly from beside him.

Smith looked at him in amusement. “I know.
Right?” He looked over the boy’s shoulder and shook his head when
he caught sight of the same strange sculpture he’d seen earlier
that day. It featured prominently on a rise above the rink. “Hey,”
he said to get the teen’s attention again. He nodded towards the
sculpture. “Do you know what that is? I’ve been meaning to ask my
friend, but just haven’t gotten around to it.”

“Didn’t think you sounded like you were from
around here,” the boy said before following Smith’s gaze. “That’s
Cloud Gate. It’s been around since I was a little kid. It’s totally
one of the best things in the city. You never heard of Cloud
Gate?”

Smith studied the big, silver, upside down,
half-way flattened U-like thing and frowned. It shone bright in the
night and he had to admit that it reflected some of the city’s
skyscrapers brightly and beautifully back at them. People were
swarming around and under it, taking pictures and making faces at
themselves in the sculpture’s mirrored surface. He studied it some
more and a light dawned. “A cloud, huh?” he asked doubtfully
because it made him think of something else completely. “If you ask
me, it’s shaped more like a -- ” From the corner of his eye, he saw
Lily approaching again, and he reached out, grasped her arm and
pulled her towards him.

“Let go --”

“Hey, what’s with this city and its weird
public art?” he asked before she could spew her displeasure at him.
He watched as anger turned to confused surprise. “Why would they
showcase a big assed kidney bean in the middle of downtown?”

Her lips twitched towards a smile for a half
a second, but then she narrowed her eyes at him and stiffened again
and just looked at him.

Smith shook his head. “I’m sorry, okay? But
you were so tired when we got back and you just looked so peaceful
sleeping that I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

“Bull,” she countered and flipped her hair
from her collar so that it was spilling around her shoulders. “The
shooting incident scared you and you decided to go all macho on me
and try to protect me. Just like you didn’t want me following up at
the cigar shop.”

Caught, Smith grinned. “Okay, that too, but
you heard the concierge at the hotel as well as I did. He said the
neighborhood was on the iffy side.”

“Let go.”

Smith released her and sighing, watched as
she straightened her jacket. She always could hold a grudge. He
shoved his hands in his pockets and looked over her shoulder at the
Park Grill, the restaurant that fronted the rink. “I’m hungry, but
that place looks way too busy. I’m going back to the hotel and
ordering room service,” he told her. “You coming, or staying?”

She considered him with narrowed eyes. “You
got anything good to report on Landry’s mistress because if not,
I’d just as soon stay here. I’ve already eaten.”

“She had some things to say, yes.”

“Fine. Give me five minutes,” was all she
said before skating off.

Lily sat at her laptop at a small round table
in the anteroom of their suite. What she really wanted to do was
relax on the plush-looking divan in front of the nicely roaring
fireplace or the flat-screen television, but she sat straight in
her armchair and said, “Okay, I’ve made a chart here. Tell me what
you learned while visiting Ms. Pfister.”