Ace Is Wild (42 page)

“Including me?”

“You didn’t waste any time saying good-bye,” she pointed out.

“The place was crawling with cops and feds.”

“That’s what happens when you call and tell them you were almost murdered by a high-ranking mob figure.”

“Debriefing brings out your sarcastic nature.”

Sarcasm had more to do with getting her through the phone call. Speaking of which . . . “Did you want something? Besides asking useless questions and telling me things I already know?”

“I thought I’d tell you some things you didn’t know.” He must be talking about the case because Vivi knew everything there was to know about Daniel. Okay, the phone call had surprised her, but the phone call had exhausted Daniel’s capacity for mystery.

“Let me guess,” she said. “Flip is still in jail and Hatch is keeping him company. And Patrice is in a different jail.”

“That’s the bottom line,” he said.

“Well, thanks for letting me know.”

“Vivi . . .”

She waited, every sense straining, but that was all he said. Just her name. Her ears didn’t pick up anything more, and her noncorporeal senses still hadn’t kicked back in where Daniel was concerned. She doubted they ever would.

“Good-bye, Daniel,” she said, and she disconnected.

In her entire life, Vivi had never had a quiet moment. She’d been accidentally tapping into other people’s thoughts for as long as she could remember. She’d always thought silence would be the closest thing to heaven, but silence from Daniel, that kind of silence, was just too much to bear.

DANIEL HAD HIS OWN DEBRIEFING SESSION, CONSIDERABLY shorter than Vivi’s since he had no trouble being believed. The feds were a bit dicier about his decision to go off on his own. So was the U.S. attorney’s office. Those problems were solved with his resignation, at least as far as he was concerned.

He could have stayed on at the U.S. attorney’s office; he was a hero for putting a halt to the mob uprising. But he’d made a deal with Tony Sappresi, and while he could have justified breaking a deal with a mob boss, he found he didn’t want to.

He’d solved the case. Sure, Vivi had been a big part of the solution, but he’d have gotten there eventually—and he’d saved his and Vivi’s lives. He still felt like a failure. He’d been a good agent, but he’d had to give it up before he was ready. He was a good lawyer, too, top of his class in law school. But that was just about grades on a transcript. When it came to trying cases, he didn’t have a very good track record. Probably because his heart wasn’t in it.

Not that he wanted to think about his heart at the moment. What he wanted, or rather needed, to think about was his future—as in not having one. He wasn’t worried about his ability to keep breathing and walking around. It was the direction that bothered him. He’d always had a purpose, and his purpose had always involved getting the bad guys off the street.

Problem was, he couldn’t be an agent, and he couldn’t be a lawyer, and vigilantes were frowned upon, not to mention completely against his ethical makeup. All that left was superhero, unless he suddenly started getting messages from the great beyond. The only image he was getting with any regularity was Vivi’s, and there was no mystery where those images originated. What to do about them, now there was a mystery.

Step one, he decided, was to have a face-to-face with her. The phone call had been a complete bust. She’d sounded a little shaky in the beginning, but then her voice had been so steady he thought he’d imagined that first part. He didn’t have her skill at reading people, but Vivi wasn’t all that good at hiding her feelings, so here he was, knocking on her front door.

She pulled it open and stepped back in invitation. She didn’t bat an eye. She hadn’t batted an eye when he left her, either. No tears, no pleading, no questions. The woman claimed to be in love with him, and she didn’t even want to know when she’d see him again. Apparently, none of that had changed.

“You have a reason for being here, I’d imagine,” she said, her voice as empty of feeling as her expression. He held up a white takeout bag. “Burgers from that little mom-and-pop place.”

She ignored the bag, but he saw her swallow a couple of times, her lips twitching like she wanted to lick them. He was damn glad she didn’t because there were things to be cleared up between them, and if he had to watch her lick her lips he wasn’t sure he could keep his hands off her long enough to remedy anything but his great and irresistible hunger for her. Vivi didn’t look like she’d be receptive to physical interaction until the emotional part of the program was fixed, so she’d probably kick him out and then he’d be back to square one, waiting for her to cool down while his need to be with her, even if it was just to talk, grew to even more astronomical proportions. And since bribery wasn’t working, he fell back on hubris, barging in and shutting the door behind him—not that Vivi tried to stop him.

She didn’t make any sort of protest at all, just backed away, her eyes never leaving his face. Even in the gloom Daniel swore he saw desire in them. But there was vulnerability there, too, and it got to him like nothing else could. She’d always been so sure of herself, so confident the world would behave exactly as she expected—predicted— it to. Except him, she said she couldn’t read him. Because she loved him. Strangely enough, knowing he was as much a mystery to her as she was to him put Daniel almost totally at ease for the first time since he’d met her. Almost. Dealing with Vivi had never been easy. He didn’t expect that to change now.

“Mike tells me you got a lawyer and refused to answer any more questions,” he said, getting on with the matter of putting their professional affiliation in the past so they could both move on with their lives.

“I answered their questions,” Vivi said, “so did you, I assume. And since they actually believe you, what did they need me for anyway?”

“Corroboration. The case has to be properly assembled, and they can’t do that without your statement. There was no reason to bring a lawyer into it. They’d have let you go by now. All you had to do was sit tight and let the situation play out—and what am I saying? You never could do that. You have no patience, and no faith in anyone but yourself. You always have to do things your way.”

“I let you rescue me, didn’t I?”

“You let me . . .” And here was the argument he’d been expecting. She drove him crazy like no one else could. “You’re saying you could have gotten free any time you wanted?”

“You set me free, remember? And you got Patrice to take away Hatch’s gun. And I didn’t do anything because I knew you had a plan, and your plan probably included me being incapacitated. Hatch and Patrice thought I was a nonthreat, too. I could have done something once my hands were free, ran away, stomped on Hatch’s foot, whatever, but suddenly jumping in like that would have messed everything up.”

“Suddenly jumping up would have resulted in immediate gunfire,” Daniel said, somewhat mollified—and surprised— by her logic. And what it said about her.

“Exactly. And since they had all the firepower, we’d be dead.”

“So . . .” Daniel ventured farther into the store, encouraged by the general thaw. “You trusted me?”

Vivi bumped up a shoulder. “You came even though I said you would die trying to protect me. My vision—”

“We managed to prevent every one of those visions.”

“We?”

“We.”

“That would be a really nice ending to all this, except you don’t believe in my visions.”

And Daniel didn’t want an ending. But he couldn’t just blurt that out. He had to work around to it. “If I don’t believe in your visions, how did I know to jump the other way instead of trying to protect you? And how did I know where to find you?”

Vivi stopped halfway to the front counter, turned, and looked at him. “How did you know?”

He shrugged, as if it were every day he collaborated with a Mafia capo. “Tony Sappresi. I agreed to step down from his case if Tony would send his guys out and check Patrice Hanlon’s properties. They narrowed it down to three. One of the three was a salvage yard, and you said there were cars in your vision.”

“Tony? What made you go to him?”

“Maxine.”

She snorted out a laugh. “Really?”

“You left Maxine at my house for a reason.”

“I left Maxine because I thought she might come in handy. Like if you didn’t want to take your car.”

“Well, she came in handy. Patrice has a lot of property. I figured Hatch was watching you, and the only way to get you out in one piece was to surprise him. But there was no way to check all the places in time. I was just kind of driving around, trying to figure out what to do, and I realized I was almost to Tony’s place. The rest you know.”

She took a moment to digest it all. “Why did you do it?” she finally asked. “Why did you throw your career away for me?”

“You put your life on the line to save mine,” Daniel said. “I owed you.”

Wrong answer. Vivi crossed her arms over her chest, squeezing tight to ease the pain. She finished crossing the room and went behind the counter, feeling better for having the bulk of it between her and Daniel.

“Well, debt paid,” she said. “You can sleep with a clear conscience tonight.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Me, too,” she said over him. “I helped save your life, that makes up for what happened with Tom Zukey. No more sleepless nights, and no more visions.” She hoped.

“And that’s it?”

“Well, I finally got someone in law enforcement to believe in me,” Vivi said. “So it’s not a total loss.”

Daniel crossed the room, stopping on the opposite side of the counter. He laid his hands on the glass top, taking some time to gather his thoughts.

Vivi could tell something had changed, and she had a feeling she was about to find out the real reason Daniel had come calling, because she knew it wasn’t to rehash the case. Her heart began to pound, black spots crowding the edges of her vision before she realized she’d stopped breathing.

She sucked in a breath, trying to make sure Daniel didn’t notice his effect on her. She probably should have stepped back so there was more than the width of that narrow counter between them, but making her shaky muscles behave was more than she could manage.

“So,” Daniel said, “I guess we trust each other.”

Vivi nodded. It was the only safe response.

“You could say we like each other, too.”

Another nod.

“You might even say we’re friends. In fact, we could be more than friends. We could be business partners.”

Vivi froze, even her shaking knees locked as her eyes shifted to his. “Huh?”

“I’m going into private work,” he said. “Mainly cases that are long cold. I thought maybe you’d be able to help. It’ll take a while to get a rep—”

“Hold it!” This time she had no trouble moving her feet, backing away from Daniel, not to mention the notion they could work together. And nothing else. “I don’t think—”

“I do.” Daniel came around the end of the counter, stopping when Vivi backed off again. “Like I said, it’ll take time to build a reputation. Things will be tight for a while.”

He looked around, and she knew he was thinking hardship would be no change for her. “I do all right,” she said.

“I’m not asking you to give all this up,” he said, with a crooked smile. “I was just thinking I might be able to use a psychic. Especially one who wants to do more than tell people about their marriage prospects and if they’re going to be successful in business.”

“You’re really asking me to work with you?”

“Absolutely.”

Vivi was flabbergasted, to say the least. She was also deflated, disappointed, and pissed off big-time. She didn’t know what she’d expected him to say . . . That was garbage, she knew exactly what she’d expected him to say—or at least what she wanted him to say. And she was an idiot for holding out hope of anything emotional where Daniel was concerned.

“I told you I love you, you idiot.”

“You did.”

“And you have the nerve to show up here and talk about everything but that?”

“Well . . .”

“You offered me a job!”

“Yeah, but I brought dinner, too.”

“Get out!” She gave him a two-handed shot to the chest that didn’t move him an inch but sent pain singing up to her shoulders.