Red-Hot & Reckless Read online

  He stared at her as he dried some overflow from his hand. “You always drink on the job?”

  She smiled as she screwed the lid back on. “Always.”

  She neither offered up excuses or explanations, reminding him of Nicole.

  Of course, had Kylie been wearing a flowery dress and doing the cha-cha in her seat she probably would have reminded him of Nicole. Seemed he was completely incapable of prying the maddening woman from his mind.

  Kylie sighed. “Nothing.” She looked at him in the dark. “I have to tell you again, I don’t think anyone’s even paying attention to this place. Aside from us, of course. The most action I’ve seen in the past four days is the gardener pruning the annuals bordering the walk there.”

  Alex had been so distracted he hadn’t even thought about the case. All he seemed capable of doing was cursing himself and wondering where Nicole had gone after she’d left his place. And hoping she was all right.

  Kylie squinted at him. “Are you okay?”

  “Hmm?” Alex looked at her blankly.

  She gestured at where he was still wiping his hand. “You don’t seem all there.”

  Oh, he was all here, all right. The problem was he was wishing he were somewhere else and with someone else.

  “Fine. I’m fine,” he said absently, staring out at the empty estate house again. All the lights were on timers, the security system armed and the only sound to be heard was the chirping of crickets.

  “Can I ask you a question?” he said quietly.

  Kylie shifted in her seat. “Sure,” she said, although she didn’t sound all that sure. “Go ahead.” She smiled. “After all, nothing says I have to answer it.”

  He grinned at that. “What is it with you bad girls? I mean, are you raised being wary of everyone?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. That wasn’t my question. I, um, was just thinking aloud.”

  Silence stretched between them as Alex searched for a way to tactfully ask his question. He cleared his throat. “Tell me, what would it take for you to settle down?”

  Kylie’s eyes widened, then she slowly smiled. “Are you proposing?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  “Good, because I would have turned you down flat.”

  “Is it something I said?”

  She shook her head and reached for a bag of chips on the dash. “Uh-uh. It’s just that I’ve pretty much figured out that the marriage route isn’t part of my personal plan.”

  He waited for her to continue. She didn’t. Instead she crunched on potato chips then washed them down with the Bailey’s-laced coffee.

  “Is there any particular reason for that?” he asked.

  She looked down, seeming unnaturally interested in the chip bag. “Let’s just say that when a girl gets burned often enough, well…” She shrugged.

  “You’ve been burned a lot?”

  “You could say that.” She laughed without humor and held out the bag. He shook his head and she put it back on the dash. “Not a lot of men can handle what I do for a living, you know?”

  Alex guessed that not many men could handle her, period.

  Just like he couldn’t handle Nicole.

  He sank back in the seat and blew out a long breath. “They don’t know what they’re missing,” he said absently. “The guys who can’t handle what you do for a living.”

  She stared at him. “And your girl…she’s probably wishing you’d call her.”

  He gave Kylie a lopsided smile. “Trust me, I’m the last person she wants to hear from right now.”

  “Which means you’re the first one who should call.” She picked up a pair of binoculars from the dash and scanned the quiet neighborhood and the area around the house. She lowered them a little and looked at him.

  Alex realized he was staring. “I just think you may be right.”

  Kylie grinned. “I’m always right.”

  JUST A LITTLE PEEK…

  Nicole duckwalked to the far corner of the roof, paused for a moment, then looked over the side at the truck below. There was someone in the cab, sitting behind the wheel, but given the angle at which the vehicle was parked, there was no direct light to make out more than a shadow.

  Damn.

  There was a brief flash of light, then a point of red burned bright before dimming again.

  A cigarette. He was smoking a cigarette.

  She watched as smoke curled from the open window up over the roof of the truck cab, then she sat back.

  What was he waiting for?

  She pushed back her shirt sleeve. Just after 2:00 a.m. At this time of night she should be in bed…with Alex.

  She jammed her eyes shut. Hot, untrusting men and soft, rustling sheets were the last things she should be thinking about right now. The only problem was, every time she breathed, she caught herself pining over Alex.

  And pining was about the word for it, too.

  She grimaced and tugged her sleeve to cover her watch again.

  She was going to have to go down.

  She looked over the side again to find the driver pitching his cigarette out the window, producing a wide arc of sparks. Nicole followed the path then nearly hit the gravel when she looked back to find the driver had exited the vehicle and appeared to be looking directly up at her.

  Great. Just great. Here she was a seasoned pro and she was making mistakes usually reserved for amateur night.

  She hurried back across the rooftop toward the fire escape, not stopping again until she stood on the sidewalk below.

  There was no traffic at that time of night. As busy as New York and New Yorkers were, even the city and its occupants had to sleep sometime. And on Monday, it was now. Checking her gun, her cell phone and her can of industrial grade mace, she walked down the block, keeping close to the shadows while she caught her breath. Within three minutes she hugged the brick that flanked the alley entrance then slowly moved her head to take in the back of the truck parked some fifty feet down the alley. It hadn’t moved.

  One of the lights above the auction house garage door went off. Then another. She squinted to see that the driver was pointing what had to be a peashooter at the protected bulbs until the area around the auction house was as dark as the rest of the alley.

  That meant that the streetlights behind her spotlighted her like a target.

  Nicole slunk to the inside of the alley, keeping close to the wall, and moved in a few feet away from the light.

  The driver put the play gun in the truck cab and took out a more sinister piece that looked like it weighed as much as Nicole did. She swallowed hard, thinking the thing could blow a hole a mile wide in the brick she clung to. Not to mention what it could do to her.

  She concentrated on keeping her breathing easy as the driver rounded the truck, looked around, then released the clamp keeping the cargo door closed. The door rolled silently open and out jumped four guys dressed all in black.

  Whoa.

  Five against one.

  Even Nicole knew those odds weren’t exactly in her favor.

  But she’d come too damn far to back off now. Who knew when Dark Man would show up as a blip on her radar again?

  She watched the men form a huddle of sorts then scatter, none of them approaching the door to the auction house.

  What were they doing?

  She edged a little closer to see better, then felt something poke into her back. She blindly reached back to see what was jutting from the wall. Only what she found wasn’t attached to the wall, but rather to a man. A very big man.

  And this time it wasn’t Alex.

  “YOU WANT ME TO WAIT?”

  Alex climbed out of the van down the street from the auction house. “No. I’m sure nothing’s going on here, either. Why don’t you go on home, Kylie,” he told her. “I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll talk about where we go from here.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “After pulling double shifts the past few days I could use some downtime
.”

  Alex thanked her then watched as her van turned right at the first corner.

  He didn’t quite know what he was doing here.

  Oh, hell, he knew perfectly well what he was doing here. Somewhere nearby Nicole was in shadow waiting for D.M. to make a move for the paintings.

  He absently rubbed the back of his neck and eyed the surrounding businesses. Quiet. Everything quiet.

  Despite her urgings to do so, he’d never taken the time to case the joint, learn the ins and outs, hadn’t even encouraged Nicole to talk to him about what she’d found out, so he was pretty much feeling his way around in the dark.

  More than likely D.M. wouldn’t go for the front entrance. Previous jobs showed him going from the back, the side, even the roof, but never the front. That was too obvious.

  Was there an alley?

  He stepped up to the front of the building. Locked steel mesh protected the sparkling windows and the front door. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the streetlamps and squinted into the darkness through the right window. A pair of antique armchairs were positioned on either side of a butt-ugly seascape painting showing an angry sea.

  Nothing. Not a movement or a beam of light to indicate there was any life in the place.

  Then again, there probably wouldn’t be. He’d been to auctions here before and knew the main auction room was located near the back. And, of course, the policy listed the vault as being in the basement.

  He stuffed his hands deep into his pants pockets and started around the block to check out the alley, his gaze skimming the buildings across the street. If Nicole was indeed staking out the auction house, could she see him right now? And if she could, would she say anything?

  Damn, but he’d made a fine mess out of what had been, as Athena had so eloquently pointed out, the best thing that had ever happened to him. His life had resembled a work-related vacuum, the only happenings unrelated to work involving his parents and sister.

  Not that he’d noticed.

  At least not until he’d knocked on Nicole’s hotel room door in Baltimore and found himself staring into the most beautiful, exotic, provocative eyes he’d ever seen.

  Almost immediately he’d felt…alive, somehow. He’d become aware of everything he was lacking, and had seen her as the source to fill it. And, oh, had she. She’d snapped back the blinds covering his eyes and made him squint against the light she exposed him to.

  But it had been only a matter of time, he supposed, that his natural instinct to put his hands up to block the dangerous rays would kick in.

  And his jumping at the chance to accuse her of wrongdoing had been just the excuse he’d been waiting for.

  The sound of metallic scraping ripped him from his thoughts. He slowed his pace, realizing he was near the alley that led to the auction house’s back entrance. The way he’d been going, he would have passed the opening without a glance.

  Now he tucked his chin into his chest and covertly glanced down the dark passage as he passed.

  Jesus.

  Nicole was right. D.M. had targeted the auction house.

  “I WOULDN’T DO THAT if I were you,” Nicole told the goon who had caught up with her in the alley, tied her hands together, then shoved her inside the back of the truck.

  The same goon was now taking great pleasure in patting her down for weapons, his hand openly inching toward her groin area. He slid it the rest of the way home and Nicole brought her knee up, catching him squarely in the nose.

  He made a garbled sound then stumbled back a few inches, grabbing his face.

  “I warned you,” she muttered under her breath, earning laughs from the others in there with them.

  She yanked on the plastic tie binding her hands together behind her back, but there was no getting out of it without something sharp to cut it with.

  Three other goons were also in the truck, but she didn’t know if Dark Man was one of them.

  The one she’d kneed regained his equilibrium and straightened to his full height, glaring at her in the dim light from an electric lantern. He made a low sound in his throat that resembled a growl and advanced on her, apparently determined to pay her back. Nicole shoved her back against the side of the truck and braced herself.

  An arm caught her would-be assailant across the shoulders. “Leave it. You’ve got work to do.”

  Dark Man?

  Nicole swallowed hard, thinking it probably was.

  The other three goons extinguished the light then opened up the door and climbed out. The one remaining turned the light back up just enough for Nicole to make out his eyes behind the black ski mask.

  “So finally we officially meet, Ms. Nicole Bennett.”

  Her heart hiccupped in her chest. He knew her name. Not good.

  “I’d say the pleasure was all mine but, you know, one ski mask looks the same as any other,” she said coolly.

  A flash of teeth through the mouth hole, then the mask was lifted and she found herself staring directly into the face of Dark Man.

  She only wished the experience made her feel better.

  QUICK WORK with a padlock cutter and the three men who had climbed from the back of the truck were rushing inside.

  Alex looked around from where he was standing in the shadows at the end of the alley, wondering where in the hell Nicole was. No matter how angry she was with him, she’d acknowledge his presence. Wouldn’t she?

  He shuddered in apprehension.

  The police. He needed to call the police.

  He felt around his pockets for his cell phone. Damn. He must have left the blasted thing in Kylie’s van. A hell of a lot of good it would do him there.

  He slipped back out onto the street and looked up and down it. There was a payphone two blocks up and to his left. Short of randomly knocking on people’s doors and hoping they would let him use their phone, it was his only option.

  A quiet approach. That’s what they needed to make. No sirens. No flashing lights. They needed to block off both entrances to the alley and the front simultaneously before making their move or else Dark Man would slip through his fingers yet again.

  He silently cursed the length of New York City blocks then finally drew even with the phone and snatched the receiver from its cradle. A vehicle screeched to a halt at the curb and the passenger door swung open.

  “Good thing I did a little snooping around before calling it a night. Looks like you could use my help,” Kylie called to him. “Get in.”

  Alex was only too happy to oblige.

  THINGS WERE GOING from bad to worse too quickly for Nicole’s liking.

  Twenty minutes after D.M. had officially introduced himself, three other goons were back and pushing her into the dark confines of the auction house vault. With her hands still tightly bound behind her back, there was little she could do but give an occasional shove that only succeeded in angering the guy in charge of her.

  She was only glad that he wasn’t the same one she’d smacked in the nose with her knee or else she’d be the one getting the shoves. Likely headfirst into the crates surrounding them.

  She tripped over something in the dark.

  “Would somebody turn on a light, please?” she said between gritted teeth.

  A door closed behind them and a light was switched on. She looked down to see what she’d tripped over and nearly screamed when she saw the guard she’d paid for information the other day. His face stared up at her sightlessly. Stone-cold dead.

  Nicole quickly swallowed the bile rising in her throat as she spotted two other bodies in the same condition.

  She’d never seen a dead person this close before. It looked like someone had pulled their plug, letting out every bit of air so that their muscles and skin hung slack and gray.

  “Oh, God,” she murmured.

  D.M. chuckled. “What’s the matter, Ms. Bennett? Don’t like seeing the results of your handiwork?”

  She stared at him. He’d put his mask back on, likely in case there were h
idden cameras trained on the area that they hadn’t identified.

  “That’s right. You killed these three men. In cold blood.”

  Nicole’s knees felt suddenly weak, but she strengthened them and straightened her shoulders. Why was she getting the impression that this theft was less about the paintings and more about her?

  “Excuse me, but did I accidentally run over your dog or something?” she asked. “Because it sounds like you’re carrying a grudge and I’m the unlucky recipient of it.”

  “Let’s just say that we share some people in common.”

  “No, I’d say let’s get specific because I’ve had just about as many vague jabs as I can take for one night.”

  “Okay, then. As you wish.”

  Dark Man seemed to appreciate a painting that one of his goons had broken out of its crate and was checking for security bands, anything that might help someone locate the painting in case of theft.

  “Do you recall a woman by the name of Christine Bowman, Ms. Bennett?”

  Oh, boy, did she.

  Christine Bowman’s name seemed to be coming up a lot lately. She was the thief who had stolen a small fortune in uncut diamonds from the diamond district right here in New York, leaving two dead security guards in her wake. Nicole had followed Christine to St. Louis and acted like she was the regular housekeeper of the mansion Christine had rented, pleading with her when Christine might have sent her away that Nicole needed the money to take care of her six kids.

  Then after dodging and confronting a green but savvy St. Louis P.I. named Ripley Logan, she’d made off with the diamonds, but not before seeing Christine arrested for the original theft and involvement in the murders of the two guards.

  D.M. stepped to loom over her, his gaze raking her face. Nicole could feel the rage emanating from him. “She was my wife. Well, technically she still is, but you can understand how her being behind bars for life would restrict such a relationship.”

  Nicole wished she could find the stop button so she could get off this scary ride.

  “Yes, Nicole, consider this payback time,” he said, moving so the mouth of his mask hovered above her ear.

  She shuddered, knowing she was in for it good this time.