Detect Me (9 page)

There was something intensely vulnerable and unsure about Nikki in that moment, so much so that it was difficult to connect this woman with the one who had confronted an armed criminal empty-handed. She was waiting for him to walk right out that door, and Mark knew that it was time for him to go. He imagined letting the door slam shut behind him; imagined his last look at Nikki being her sad, resigned face. His last look at Nikki… Mark’s gut clenched.

“Well…” he said slowly, “I don’t think you’re out of danger yet.”

And in spite of the truth to those words, Nikki’s face brightened.

Watching Mark sit there at her tiny dining table in his sleep-wrinkled clothes, looking larger than life with his gorgeous features and streetwise confidence was slightly surreal. Nikki knew that in reality Mark was too big for her apartment; too big for her life. And yet somehow when he settled back to use her vacated chair as an ottoman and shot her a schoolboy-naughty grin, everything fit.

It shouldn’t have worked, but it did.

“See, I’m a little bit familiar with Ghost,” Mark said, tipping his chair back on two legs and staring up at the ceiling. He missed her raised eyebrows. “And the one thing I can tell you about Ghost is that she holds a grudge. Remember what she said to you, that she wouldn’t forget? That she’d be gunning for you? She meant it.”

The elation Nikki had unthinkingly felt when Mark had told her she wasn’t out of danger started to fade. See, Nikki knew already that if she was in danger, Mark wasn’t going anywhere. But the other side of that coin was… she was in danger. From a very scary criminal.

She gulped. “So you think she’s going to, what, try to find me? Come to my apartment and…” Nikki trailed off. She didn’t really want to think about the details.

The front two chairs legs slammed back into the ground and Mark looked across the room at her, all the amusement dropped away from his face, leaving him with solemn eyes and a tight-lipped mouth. He shrugged.

“I don’t know what she plans to do, but I’m going to stick around until we find out,” he told her. Their eyes locked. “I’d promise you safety, but I can’t. The only thing I can tell you is that I’ll do anything and everything I can to keep you safe.”

A cell phone ringer shattered the moment; Mark pulled his phone out of his pocket and started to pace across the apartment. Nikki started to wash dishes to give her hands something to do. She gathered from the terse statements Mark was barking into the phone that the police were calling in their claim to his time.

“I’ll see you in a bit,” Mark sighed, finally stabbing the end call button and shoving it in his back pocket. Nikki tried not to examine his butt too closely. But she gathered that it was definitely worth further attention.

Though not for her. The truth of the matter was that Mark had slept over and tried a grand total of nothing. He hadn’t so much as given her a hug. Heck, he’d seen her practically in her undies and barely blinked. True, Mark had been injured, but Nikki was quite sure that even if she was bleeding she’d still want to jump him.

She had to face facts that even if she’d felt like jumping into a relationship with a workaholic who appeared to only have significant personal connections with criminals (and hmm, yes, she really needed to inquire further about that at some point), Mark just wasn’t interested. And that was okay. Fine, really. Things were better this way.

“Okay,” Nikki said, determined not to be sad or nervous about being in the apartment by herself. She couldn’t live her life ducking at shadows. “Are you going to, um… come back?”

Mark blinked. He opened his mouth and then closed it again. He reached into his jacket pocket and drew out something that clinked in the palm of his hand.

“Here,” he said, and reached across to her. Nikki watched in disbelief as keys dropped into her cupped hands.

She swallowed hard against the lump that formed in her throat. “What’s this?” she asked.

“Keys,” Mark said with that smart-aleck grin she was starting to recognize as a familiar friend. She was charmed against her will. “Keys to my office, to be precise. Why don’t you meet me there in a couple hours? If you want to, uh, read up on Ghost or something, feel free to hang out there in the meantime.”

She had no idea how to handle this kind of thoughtfulness. A second ago she’d been worried about him running off for days. Nikki felt dangerously close to tears. She clenched her fist so tightly that the serrated edges of the keys bit into her palm and distracted her enough to keep the weepiness at bay.

“How are you going to get in?” she asked lightly.

Mark winked. “Well, I’m hoping you’ll let me in,” he said. Then he turned and strode out of the kitchen and was gone, shutting the door to the apartment carefully behind him.

“Look, I’m telling you, I don’t know anything more than you do. Probably less,” Mark said, hovering at the station exit four hours later. His blood pressure was up and his temper was flaring. It had been a long four hours.

The chief of police crossed meaty arms over his chest, expanding his circumference to at least five feet around. He scowled at Mark with the purplish flush of someone who’d been living off caffeine and sugary carbs for too long.

“Forgive me if I have a problem believing that,” the chief said. He sounded short of breath just from following Mark across the station floor. There was no way he’d be able to follow if Mark made a break for it. Mark stared longingly at the double doors in front of him.

He sighed and turned back to purple-face.

“Just because I’ve had… associations… with Ghost in the past doesn’t mean that I know anything now,” Mark said, trying to sound reasonable.

The police chief puffed up his chest impressively. “It’s the nature of your so-called former associations that makes you a suspect, Harrison!”

Mark gritted his teeth and willed himself not to lose it on this guy. It wouldn’t help anyone, he reminded himself. Especially Nikki, who was waiting for him to come back and keep her safe from Ghost. The thought calmed him like nothing else.

“In case you’ve forgotten, that association landed me in the hospital for six weeks,” Mark said evenly. He stared down the chief of police. The other man blinked and Mark pressed his advantage. “She attacked me while I was sleeping and beat the crap out of me. Does that sound like an association I’d want to continue?”

The chief opened his mouth and closed it a few times and swallowed audibly. Mark really hoped that had worked, because he was feeling a little sick. There was nothing he hated more than those memories, unless it was sharing them.

“I’ll be watching you, Harrison,” the chief said finally, and Mark took that as his cue to go.

The station was at least fifteen blocks from his office, but he didn’t hail a cab. He was still all churned up inside, like dark abstract slashes of paint across a canvas. His feet ate up the ground on autopilot, and almost before Mark realized it he was looking up at the sleek street face of his office building.

He sighed. He’d never much liked this place, but it was in a good location and the view across the city was undeniable.

“Good afternoon, Detective!” the secretary trilled as he walked in. Mark gave her a wan smile.

“How are you doing, um… how are you?” he said. He walked past the elevator to the stairwell and pulled open the door. It used to stick with lack of use, but he’d been renting the office here for a little while now, and the door pulled open easily.

The secretary’s stilettos clacked against the floor right behind him. Mark’s spine prickled and he tensed, though he knew intellectually that there was no danger from the over-friendly brunette. It still made him uneasy. He hated having people hovering behind him.

“I thought you might want to know that a woman went up to your office hours ago and hasn’t come back,” the secretary said. Mark glanced over his shoulder at her.

“Oh really?” he asked. There was no point telling the woman that he knew. Why give out information if you didn’t have to? “How do you know that?”

The brunette smiled at him, wide and sly, clearly impressed with her own cleverness. “I recognized her from the other day. You can always tell people that look a little… off.” Mark forced his face to remain blank. “When she went up and didn’t come back down, I went knocking. She opened the door and told me that she’d been given a key. Is that right?” she said, clearly ready to dial 9-1-1 in a millisecond.

Of course Nikki just opened up the door and gave out the pertinent information freely. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to lie, or not open the door at all. He was going to have to teach Nikki to be sneakier than that…

Mark broke off that train of thought and shook his head, mystified at himself. What was he doing, planning like this, like he and Nikki were partners or something? He’d never had a partner before. The closest thing he’d had was a fiancé, and look at how that had worked out.

“That’s right,” he said. He didn’t miss the disappointed look that crossed the secretary’s face. And this was exactly why Mark avoided her - behind the carefully applied makeup lay sharp edges.

The conversation screeched to a halt and Mark bounded up the stairs with a quick wave over his shoulder. He didn’t like the secretary, but he still didn’t want to be less than a gentleman.

As he made his way up to the fifth floor, Mark’s felt anticipation stir in his chest. He tried to beat it down, but it was no use. He’d seen Nikki just a few short hours ago and yet he couldn’t reach his office fast enough.

He strode down the hall and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. Mark scowled. Nikki was seriously going to have to be more careful. Still, it didn’t stop his heart from lifting as he opened the door, eager to see Nikki waiting for him, and hoping that she wasn’t huddled frightened in the corner.

The door swung open to reveal Nikki sitting on top of his desk with what looked like the entire contents of his filing cabinets spread out around the office. A huge whiteboard he didn’t even remember owning was propped up next to her feet.

“Hi!” Nikki said brightly. “I’ve been plotting!”

Mark stopped in the doorway and stared around the office, looking a little shell-shocked. Nikki followed his gaze. Okay, maybe she could have put a few more things back when she was finished, but this was urgent, right?

Besides, she hated cleaning.

“What’s that?” Mark said, finally walking inside and stepping carefully around piles of paper. He pointed at the design drawn carefully on the whiteboard she’d unearthed in the very back of the furthest file cabinet.

Nikki beamed. She’d gotten so discouraged with all the rejections that it had been a long time since she’d painted or drawn, well, anything. This looked more like an engineering blueprint than an interpretive masterpiece, but it had still felt good.

“It’s a map!” she said, hauling the thing up into her lap and trying to grasp it by the sides. It was almost too wide for her to hold. “See, I plotted out sightings of Ghost over the last couple years and figured out the statistical mid-point. If you look at the middle there’s a circle indicating…” Her fingers slipped on the board and she flailed.

Mark grabbed the board with one hand and steadied Nikki with the other. She leaned into the touch and smiled at him gratefully. He squeezed her shoulder, though his expression was still uncertain.

She tapped a finger against the middle of the map. “That’s the center point right there. I’m guessing that Ghost has to have a base somewhere close by, because she’s a thief, right? Has to be a place to bring the stuff.”

The side of Mark’s mouth quirked up in a grin. “So when you said plotting, you meant…”

Nikki grinned back. “Yeah, literally, a bit.”

He propped the board against his desk and leaned down on his haunches to examine it. A frission of anticipation ran through Nikki. It had been a long time since anyone close to her hand looked at her work. Even though this wasn’t the same as a drawing pulled out of her head, it still felt personal.

“This is good work,” Mark finally pronounced, sitting back and looking impressed. “The number crunchers in the police force missed out on you.”

Her heart skipped around in her chest. “Oh well,” she said, trying for an airy tone. “Their loss is your gain.”

Mark glanced over at her. “So it is,” he said.

Nikki bit her lip and tried not to smile too much. Mark turned back to the board and traced a wide circle around 35
th
and Broad St. with his finger. She noticed that he moved lightly so as not to smear the ink, and loved him a little for it.

“What were you planning to do with this information?” Mark asked after a few long moments of contemplating the board. “Did you want to tell the police?”

Nikki blinked.

“What? Oh, I mean… I guess we could do that.”

Mark looked amused. “You guess? I take it you had another idea.”

She did, in fact. “Okay, see, what I was thinking was that we’d go take a look-about downtown and wander around the buildings; get a feel for which ones could make for an excellent criminal lair. We could ask around a little, see if any of the neighbors know anything. It would be a lot of work, but I think that together we could get it done faster and more efficiently than the police. What do you think?”