Blue Clouds (2 page)

She knew this was where it would start, just as soon as he started calling her “his.” Without bothering to reason any further, she screamed. She opened her mouth and let fly every frustration, every ounce of rage, every instance of self-pity, desperation, and destroyed trust she'd suffered today and every day before that. She screamed and kicked and pounded and bit until he hauled her like a howling whirlwind across the parking lot.

She aimed for his testicles when he adjusted his grip.

He let her go, then backhanded her so hard she stumbled and hit the pavement. Pain shot through Pippa's elbow as it connected with the blacktop. Her hip slammed into a concrete separator. She tried scrambling away, knowing what would follow, but his steel-toed boot caught her leg.

She kept screaming. She'd warned Billy she would report him. She'd threatened to get a court order and humiliate him in front of the entire force. He'd stayed away this past week. She'd thought herself safe.

Even as he leaned over to grab her by her hair—the long hair that he'd ordered her not to cut—a voice shouted from somewhere beyond the veil of sleet and blood and panic.

“Let her alone, you bastard! Let her alone, or I'll shoot!”

Henry. Thank God for Henry. Pippa whimpered with relief. As a night security guard, Henry looked harmless. She'd offered him plenty of cups of coffee those nights she'd stayed late. They'd exchanged pleasantries as she checked out in the evenings. He must be in his sixties, no bigger than herself, and hunched with arthritis, but he had a gun. She prayed Billy hadn't gone beyond caring. Billy carried a gun, too.

“Pippa, can you stand up? We're here. Just back away from him. Henry's got him covered.”

Tears welled in her eyes once more. Quickly, Pippa backed away from Billy's dangerous feet, pushing herself up with her hands, letting other hands grab her and heave her up. She didn't know how many of them were there. She didn't care. Shaking, she kept backing away, letting the people swarming out of the building surround her, protect her, separate her from Billy and his rage. Her friends had come to her rescue. She still had friends. Weeping at the knowledge, she allowed them to lead her away.

***

Her scrapes and bruises neatly cleaned and bandaged, her spirits temporarily mended by hugs and reassurances, Pippa finally arrived home, only to discover the front door unlocked.

She never forgot to lock the door. Her chest tightened in the familiar sensation of fear. Mentally, she knew Billy couldn't be here. She'd called the police this time. She had witnesses. Surely he was behind bars now.

Emotionally, Pippa still felt Billy's blows. Her hand shook as she pushed open the door.

It took only one step inside before her knees crumpled under her. On the floor, she covered her mouth with her hands to hold back her cries.

He'd shredded her cozy nest into straw. Family photographs lay in tatters, ripped from the walls, glass and frames shattered. As if a tornado had swept through, the old furniture had been overturned and flung against walls, damaging plaster and delicate bric-a-brac.

Picking herself up, stumbling across the debris to the phone, Pippa nearly fell over the kitchen table before she looked down. In shock and horror, she stared at Clio Kitty lying in a pool of blood.

It was one straw too many.

Pippa threw up.

The blaring rhythm of amplified rap pounded through the doorway and into the poorly lit street. Lost in their own alien world, the shadowy figures lounging on the curb as Seth Wyatt passed by showed no evidence of hearing the beat or watching his passage.

His eyes scarcely needed the adjustment from the night outside to the gloom inside. Swaying tin lamps and blinking neon beer advertisements provided the interior's only illumination. The bar's patrons glared as he entered, but he was accustomed to hatred and let it roll off his back.

Had he been in a questioning humor, he might have asked himself why he'd chosen to meet Dirk here. They'd been over this territory before. Nothing around him seemed familiar. Nothing jarred loose the lost memory of that night. Perhaps, if he had to think about it, he hoped someone would remember
him
instead of the other way around. But he'd lost anything resembling hope five years ago.

Seth took a booth in the back with a view of the door and waited. He'd been waiting five years. He'd wait fifty more if he must. He would find the guilty party and have his revenge.

His hired investigator didn't keep him waiting long. Dirk wasn't a small man, but he didn't belong in this dive any more than Seth did.

A six-foot-plus hulk shoved Dirk's shoulder, and the wiry detective grabbed for his gun.

“Leave him alone, Bingo. He's with me,” Seth commanded calmly, without leaving his seat.

As if by magic, the young hulk drifted back to the bar. Seth had come here often enough these last years. He knew the crowd now, even if he didn't remember them from before. They steered clear of him, as people usually did. Isolation suited Seth. Maybe that was why he'd chosen the bar. Surrounded by people, he still sat alone. He didn't bother looking up from his drink as Dirk ordered a beer.

Seth sat at the only table in the room with a lamp, not that the tiny bulb did him any favors. He knew his craggy, brooding features could frighten the sun into hiding on a good day. In here, the flickering neon lights probably cast his expression into a dangerous glower. His open-collared white shirt emphasized his darkness, so he didn't look too obvious. His hands wore no gold, but lighter lines about wrist and finger indicated where his watch and ring usually rested. He wasn't so stupid as to wear gold on this side of the city.

His expression remained impassive as Seth waited for the bartender to deliver Dirk's drink.

“Mr. Wyatt.” Dirk nodded respectfully in greeting.

Seth regarded him stonily. “No names.”

“I apologize. You're right.” Dirk twisted in his seat, his back against the tavern wall, and one eye on the action.

“You've found nothing new,” Wyatt said without prompting. He tightened his lips into icy disdain. He'd thought his new detective better than that.

“I have questioned everyone I could find who was here that night. The incident is over five years old now. Three of your witnesses are dead from drug- and gang-related incidents. Half of the rest have disappeared from sight. The others remember only what they told the cops. I'm working on it, but it will cost you a bundle if I track down all those gone missing. And you're not likely to get any more out of them than the cops did at the time. The memories of junkies are not particularly reliable.”

“They're not all junkies,” Wyatt responded automatically, his gaze shifting to the motley crowd at the bar.

“No, the rest are murderers and thieves. If this is where you went that night, you should have had your head examined. Have you tried hypnosis to see if you can recall why in hell you chose this place?”

“My shrink declares I'm not a good candidate for hypnosis,” Wyatt answered dryly. “I think that's shrink talk for I'm too hardheaded.”

Dirk bit back a smile, uncertain if Seth would appreciate a response to his humor. “It was just a suggestion.” Dirk shrugged. “I've gone over the police reports, talked with the garage personnel who handled the wreckage later. The accident smashed the car like an accordion. Any evidence of side-swiping or tampering disappeared with the impact. I've corroborated every line of the police report. They did their job well, although it was a little late by the time you demanded the investigation.”

“I was unconscious until then,” Wyatt reminded him, again in that dry tone that gave nothing away.

Dirk shrugged. “Are you certain this is the bar you were in before the accident?”

“I'm not certain of anything. I have no memory of that night at all. The hospital didn't test my blood alcohol until well after the fact. Apparently, they spent their time trying to save my life instead. But I'm not a drinking man. I do not stop in bars without good reason. I do not drink to excess. My wife was the one who leveled the drunkenness charge, and only after witnesses reported seeing me here before the accident.”

“The junkies in this place would lie for the price of an upper.”

Seth turned an icy glare back to him. “They're not all junkies,” he repeated with hostility. “One of the witnesses was a friend of mine, you'll recall.”

Seth could practically hear his detective's thoughts. He'd heard it all before.
The drunken NFL player. Right. Like he'd stand up in court.
He hadn't, of course, which was why Seth's wife had lost the case. But even if the court hadn't believed Doug, Seth did.

“All right. So Brown saw you here. Could you have come here to meet him? Why don't you let me interview him? He's the most logical reason for your presence here.”

“Doug has blackouts. His memory isn't clear on that night. I might have come here looking for him. I've dragged him out of places like this before. But he doesn't remember calling me. All he remembers is that I sat here and had a drink and that he wasn't with me. That I looked as if I were waiting for someone. And when no one arrived, I left without noticing him.”

Dirk grimaced his disbelief and Seth became defensive. “I know it sounds suspicious, but Doug wouldn't lie. He only mentioned the incident because he thought it would help if he told the police I had only one drink. And because I'd worried myself sick thinking I'd been as drunk as Natalie said. He swore I wasn't.”

“Generous of him.” Dirk's sarcasm revealed his opinion of the truthfulness of alcoholic ex-NFL players reduced to playing chauffeur for wealthy men. “I can go after the rest of those witnesses, or I can start tracking your list of people who would have benefited from your demise. Do you have a preference?”

Seth tossed back the rest of his drink and, pushing up from the booth, threw a bill on the table. “The list of my enemies is even longer and more complicated than your list of witnesses. Try the top five of both lists, then get back to me.” He walked out without so much as glancing back at the crowd of thugs and thieves behind him.

Feeling a shift in the room's tension, Dirk took a final chug of his beer, then left, uncomfortable with the crowd's focus. He didn't look like a rich white boy either. Aside from his Hispanic features, Dirk wore a battered Bengals hat he'd stolen from an airport seat, a leather bomber jacket with a rip in the pocket, and no gold. He'd even dug out his oldest pair of running shoes before driving down here. But he had the distinct feeling that the crowd behind him would put a knife through his back because of his looks as easily as for his possessions.

The streetlight outside the door had been shot out and not replaced. Every store owner who valued his life had closed up at dark and gone home. Only the pounding music and flashing neon light behind him broke the silent gloom of the street. Grateful for the license allowing him to carry the shoulder holster beneath his jacket, Dirk cautiously approached his car.

He heard the first sounds of a scuffle as he reached the corner where he'd parked his Chevy. He contemplated just climbing behind the wheel and driving off, but the expensive Jag gleaming beneath a bare bulb at a nearby warehouse alerted him. With a sigh of resignation, Dirk pulled his gun and slipped along the shadows to the alley.

He didn't know why he bothered. With a grimace, Dirk shouldered the pistol, caught the man staggering backward in his direction, choked him with his arm, kidney-punched him, then let him drop as he surveyed the damage wreaked by the man felling his last opponent with a savage kick to the groin. The grace and swiftness with which Seth Wyatt moved spoke of years of combat training. Dirk grunted in sympathy for the assailant's pain but kept a careful eye on the other three men curled up and moaning in the filth of the alley pavement.

He hadn't heard gunshots. He couldn't see blood. Judging by the blow he'd seen, Wyatt had felled them all with his fists and feet. And his pent-up rage. Definitely a dangerous man.

“Did they say what they wanted?” Dirk asked wryly as Seth calmly dusted off his trousers and stepped over one of the thugs.

“I don't think they were hired to talk.” Wearily, Seth walked out of the darkness, rolling his sleeves down. “Find out who hired them.”

With that, he walked away.

Shaking his head, Dirk watched Seth Wyatt climb into his fancy Jag and drive off. The man either had nerves of steel or no brains at all.

Dialing his cellular, Dirk kicked the scum at his feet, and called the cops.

Wyatt hadn't gotten where he was today by having no brains.

Pippa crumpled the letter from Mary Margaret in her pocket for the thousandth time as she hurried down the plane ramp into the airport terminal. After leaving all she knew and loved behind, she needed the reassurance that someone she knew and loved waited ahead.

Reluctant as she was to lose the security of her disguise, she headed for the rest room. The uncomfortable padding around her middle had to go. As an amateur in the local theater group, she knew all about padding and makeup. She didn't think Billy would figure out that the red-haired, middle-aged, plump woman who left the hairdresser and bought a ticket for the bus to Memphis was her. She'd kept the disguise when she reached the airport and bought a plane ticket to California. Now that she was here, surely she was safe.