Paint It Black (10 page)

“Hi,” she said. Then she spied Bill through the doorway and darted around Cougar. “Uncle Bill! Uncle Bill!”

“Abby!” he said, and held out his arms. She launched herself at him.

“I’ve been dumped,” Cougar said, and stood.

While Abby chattered at Bill, I elbowed Cougar and said, “So what are you pistachioed about?”

The corner of his mouth quirked, then he shook his head. “Not here. What are you guys doing?”

“Now? We were going out to dinner.”

“Just you and Abby?”

“Yeah.”

Cougar glanced around the office and then back at me. “Mind if I tag along? I need to talk to you about
something.”

“Um, sure. I’ll give you fair warning, though. I already told Abby she could pick where we ate, and I can tell you right now it won’t be Subway.”

Cougar scoffed. “Can’t be worse than any of the places you and Angel drag me into.”

Half an hour later, he changed his tune.

“Fat Daddy’s?” He squinted up at the neon sign. “You actually eat at a place called Fat Daddy’s?”

I grinned and pocketed my keys. “You were warned.”

A giant eagle in a green jersey greeted us at the door. Cougar winced, from the bright lights or the booming pop music, I wasn’t sure.

“How many?” the eagle yelled.

“Three,” I yelled back, and he motioned us forward with a giant wing. Children bounced around like popcorn in a popper. As we wandered deeper inside, the whiny boy-band voices were replaced by the ping and sirens of video games.

Cougar clutched my elbow and pulled me backward against him. “Is this hell?” he asked pitifully.

I laughed and tugged him toward the booth. Abby made me get in our side first. Cougar slid in across from us.

Our teenage waitress gave him the eye while she handed out menus. Cougar shoved his toward me. “You order,” he said.

I almost felt sorry for him. Glancing at Abby, I said,
“The usual?”

She nodded.

“We’ll take a large pig, pineapple and sweet pepper. Pan, with a pitcher of Pepsi. Give him a water.”

Cougar grinned despite himself. “Oh, my God,” he said, and covered his face with his hands.

“What?” I asked when the waitress walked away. “I don’t know what you’re whining about. We’ve got the five basic food groups covered. What more do you want?”

“Tokens!” Abby screeched. “Can I have tokens, Mama?”

“I’ll have to get change.” I waved my hands to get her to let me out.

“Wait,” Cougar said. “I got it.” He pulled out his wallet and handed her a five.

“Thanks!” Abby said, and ran toward the token machine.

I watched her settle into a race-car seat, then leaned across the table. “So what’s going on?”

Cougar frowned and toyed with the jar of parmesan. “The tape. The tape of Angel’s statement is missing from evidence.”

“What! Oh, no. How did that happen?”

“How do you think it happened? I’m telling you, Denise. Barnes has someone inside. But I kind of figured that might happen. I made an extra copy before I left my apartment that day. Tonight, I’m gonna make a dozen of them. I’ll send them to the DA, the feds … the
Daily Fucking Herald.”

The eagle paused as he walked by our table to shake his wing at Cougar.

Cougar rolled his eyes, then leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “What gets me is the person who did this is someone we know. It has to be. And he doesn’t give a damn about Angel. With no tape, what do you think Barnes would do next? He’d get one of his thugs to take out the only witness.”

My stomach twisted at the thought of Angel lying there helpless. Even though one of us was always with him, how hard would it be for someone to get to him?

Cougar sighed. “I told Bill to pass around the word that there are extra copies. I don’t know what else to do.”

Abby bounced over to the table and grabbed my hand. “Play with me, Mama.”

“Just a sec, honey. Cougar and I are talking—”

Cougar smiled and ruffled Abby’s hair. “It’s okay. Let’s play.”

Moments later, I found myself sitting in a race-car simulator that nearly gave me whiplash when Abby’s car slammed mine into the wall. Cougar laughed behind me. “Drives like her mother.”

After getting annihilated in a Space Invaders game, I begged for mercy and something I could actually play. Abby and I challenged Cougar to a game of foosball.

“You girls don’t know who you’re messing with.”
He slipped his leather jacket off his broad shoulders and tossed it in our booth. “I had one of these babies in my basement when I was a kid.”

“Is that right?” I winked. “Well, let’s see what you got, big boy.”

Cougar opened his mouth like he wanted to say something more, then clamped it shut again and grinned. We scored the first point, but then he scored the next two.

“Time-out,” Abby said, then moved around the table to stand by Cougar.

“Hey!” I protested. “You’re abandoning me?”

“Sorry, Mom.” She shrugged. “Your defense stinks.”

Cougar snickered while I pouted. They finished trouncing me and gave each other a high five. Our pizza still hadn’t arrived, so we drifted through the crowd to the Skee Ball lanes. Skee Ball, I could handle, but even here, Cougar showed me up. He found the sweet spot and sank four 100-pointers in a row. The winner light flashed above the machine, and it spat out a row of tickets that he gave to Abby to redeem. She returned with two pink plastic leis.

Cougar took them from her. She giggled when he dropped one over her head and planted a resounding kiss on each of her cheeks. When he draped mine over my head, he grabbed my waist and pulled me close to whisper, “Wait’ll I go to the hospital tonight. I’m gonna tell Angel I lei’d Necie. If that doesn’t get him talking,
nothing will.”

I laughed and pushed him away. “You’re awful!”

He wagged his eyebrows and flashed those perfect white teeth.

Our waitress nodded at me while she moved through the crowd, holding a pizza tray near her ear. Cougar squeezed the nape of my neck and helped me hustle Abby back to the table to eat. She ate most of two pieces, then begged to be excused. For the first time, I thought about Grady sitting at home, probably drunk and angry. Might as well let her have fun while she could.

I motioned her on. She smacked a kiss on my cheek before heading back to the Skee Ball lanes.

Cougar grabbed his third slice of pizza, cast it another dubious look, then took a big bite. “You know,” he said. “The scary thing is, I’m thinking this ain’t half-bad.”

“Told ya.”

He watched Abby while he chewed, then swallowed and sipped his water. He surprised me by saying, “I used to think I didn’t want kids, but they’re kinda nice, huh?”

It took me a moment to manage a reply. “What’s nice about them? They abandon their mothers for stinking at foosball.”

He smiled, and suddenly I was very conscious of the knee that brushed mine beneath the table. “You know what I mean.” He nodded at Abby. “Look at her. She’s beautiful, and so damn smart, just like her mother. It
must be nice to look at some little person like that and see yourself.”

Speechless, and more than a little flustered, I sipped my Pepsi without comment.

He stole one of Abby’s abandoned crusts and munched on it while he stared into space. “Of course, that kind of thing can bite you in the ass, too. I think my dad looked so hard for himself in me that he didn’t want to see anything else. I think my worst fear in life is turning into my father.”

Ha! Tell me about it
, I thought. It occurred to me how very little I’d thought about Barnes in the past few days. When Barnes looked at me, what did he see?

Cougar insisted on buying. He handed his Visa to the girl behind the register, then placed his hand on my hip when he reached around me to scrawl his name on the slip and snag a peppermint. When the girl said, “Have a nice night, Mr. and Mrs. Stratton,” he smiled and said, “You, too,” without bothering to correct her.

Abby held his hand while we walked to the car, and it gave my heart a funny little twinge to see them like that. Again, I wondered if I was reading more into the situation than there really was. Cougar was a flirt— everyone knew it—just a harmless flirt. But lately he didn’t feel so harmless at all.

He fastened Abby’s seat belt, and she chattered to him all the way back to the DEA office. It was snowing
again. I felt like I was back in the asteroid game again and had to struggle to keep my eyes from straying to the dizzying pattern of flurries striking the windshield.

“You getting out?” he asked when I slid into a space in short-term parking. “I was going to give you one of those tapes if you’re not in a hurry.”

“Sure.” I threw the car in park and again thought of the scene that was probably waiting for me at home. “No hurry at all.”

Again, Abby ran ahead. She threw her arms wide and pirouetted in the drifting banks.

“Watch this,” Cougar said, and stooped to grab a handful of snow. He packed it between his hands and hurled it at her.

“Hey!” she yelled when it struck her in the back. “Who did that?”

Cougar pointed at me, but Abby took one look at his face and knelt to make her own snowball. She lobbed it at him and missed by a foot. “Mama, help me!” she cried.

Together, we converged on him. He batted off my attempt, but one of Abby’s missiles hit him full in the face.

“Hey, this isn’t fair,” he said, dodging the snowballs we hurled at him.

“Tuck, help me!” he yelled, and I turned just in time to catch one between the eyes. I heard them laughing while I sputtered and brushed the snow from my eyes.

The war was on.

Drawn by the commotion, Linda and another agent joined the fray, providing Abby and me with some much-needed assistance. I hurled a one-two at Tucker and turned to find Cougar grinning at me. He hefted a cantaloupe-sized snowball in his hands. I feinted left, then right, and ducked when he lobbed it at my head. With a screech, Abby charged, flinging snowballs as fast as her little hands could form them. I turned to run and Cougar grabbed me around the waist. As if I weighed nothing, he picked me up and ran, using me as a shield. Both Abby and Tucker pelted me until I couldn’t see. I was laughing too hard to breathe.

Cougar’s iron grasp around my waist loosened for a second and I wriggled free. He chased me around the side of the building. My Keds slipped on the grass, and he launched himself at me. We went down in a flurry of arms and legs and rolled in the wet snow, trying to rub the slushy mess in each other’s faces. Cougar pinned me in seconds flat. His eyes twinkled in the glow of the streetlight, and he flashed me a triumphant grin.

I was conscious of so many things in that instant: the cold, wet snow beneath me; his warm, hard thigh between mine. The sweet, coconut-lime scent of his aftershave. His smile faded while he stared down at me. My pulse leapfrogged when his fingers tightened around my wrists, and he lowered his head.

He stopped just shy of kissing me, his mouth
hovering above mine. His peppermint-scented breath came in warm, tantalizing puffs against my face.

“Grady is a lucky son of a bitch,” he said, an instant before Abby and Tucker raced around the corner.

“Get them!” Benedict Abby shrieked, and suddenly I found my face shoved against the warm skin of Cougar’s neck. He clasped his hands around his head and shielded us from their attack.

Snowballs struck his back with a dull whup-whup-whup, but I was barely conscious of the sound while I breathed in the heated scent of him. My lips pressed against the throbbing pulse in his neck, but I couldn’t pull away, couldn’t move at all from the crush of his big body. Then the laughter faded. Abruptly, Cougar rolled off me and sat on the ground. He stared at Abby’s retreating back while I struggled to sit up.

My knees wobbled when I stood. Feeling suddenly awkward, I stretched a hand down to help him.

He shook his head. “Go,” he said with a wave. “I’ll be around in a minute.”

“But it’s cold.”

“Not cold enough,” he mumbled, refusing to meet my eyes.

His brusque tone disturbed me. Unsure of what I’d done to annoy him, I grabbed his arm.

He shook off my grasp. “In a minute.”

“But—”

Finally he looked at me. The corner of his mouth quirked. “Geez, Neese. Give a guy a break.”

I stood there, frozen by the bitter wind and the strange expression on his face.

He gave me a pointed look that was part exasperation, part pure mischief. “I’m afraid I might embarrass myself.”

“Oh.” Like a dummy, I stared blankly at him for a moment before it sank in. Of their own volition, my eyes flew to his crotch, and my breath caught when I saw the bulge there.
“Oh!”

He laughed when I jerked my gaze away.

“Well, there go my hero points.” In a deep, grave baritone, he said, “I am but a man.”

I forced a chuckle, though I was too shell-shocked to do much more. I was glad for the biting wind, another excuse for my red cheeks. I gestured toward the front. “I’m just going to …”

He laughed again when I fled.

A truce had apparently been called around front. Abby sat between Linda and Tucker on the front steps. The other agent was gone. The slight lift of Tucker’s eyebrow made my face burn. He grinned at Linda, and she ducked her head, taking a sudden interest in her boots.

“Where’s Cougar?” he asked.

I avoided his eyes by pretending to dust snow off my jacket. “He’ll be around in a minute.” Glancing at Abby, I said, “You ready to go, kiddo?”

She kicked at the snow in front of her. “Aww, do we have to?”

“Yes, ma’am. You have to take a bath and get in bed.”

She sighed and used Tucker’s leg to push herself to her feet. “Bye, guys.”

“Bye, sweetie,” Linda said.

Tucker stood and ruffled Abby’s hair. “Make your mom bring you back to play again.”

Abby took my hand, and we walked toward the car.

“Hey, you guys leaving?”

I turned toward the sound of Cougar’s voice. His face was half-hidden in the shadows as he leaned against the brick building.

“Yeah.” I plucked a strand of damp hair off my cheek. “Abby has school tomorrow. But thanks for dinner.”