Covert Christmas (4 page)

Josh stretched his feet out on a nearby chair. “I got into the business young—”

“Yeah, stealing your first car when you were five.”

Little brother had been telling stories. He frowned at her, though there was no real annoyance behind it. “I know people. That's part of my job. And I know that you're no more cut out for this sort of thing than—than your landlady who doesn't want to hear anything bad on the news. You may have the mind for it, but not the heart. Inside, you're a good person.”

Stubbornly she shook her head. “A good person wouldn't have gotten indebted to Patrick Mulroney. A good person would have gone to the police as soon as she figured out what was going on. A good person understands that's there
something wrong about spying on people, about pretending to be something you're not.”

That was one of the big differences between them: he was able to accept and blow off the things he'd done. Oh, he had a strong sense of right and wrong; his parents and Joe had seen to that. But when it interfered with what he wanted for himself, it was easy enough to ignore. Natalia, though, beat herself up over it. She was convinced she was going to hell for her sins. He probably was, too, but he preferred to enjoy the journey.

Abruptly he changed the subject. “Is there an all-night drugstore around here?”

She blinked. “Yeah, two or three blocks to the west. Do you need something?”

“If we're going to be out and about tomorrow, I need to do something about the way I look. Cut my hair, color it, shave…”

Immediately she slid forward. “You stay here and I'll—”

His smile was thin and chiding. “Right.” He drained the last of his pop, threw the can into the trash, then pulled the pistol from his pocket. “I'm guessing you know how to use this.”

Dislike flickered through her gaze, but she nodded.

“Well, I don't. The only time I've ever even held a gun was when I took one away from a sleeping marshal who was supposed to be watching me. The way he was slumped over, I didn't want it to fall and go off.”

Her mouth twitched as if she wanted to laugh but didn't dare. Yeah, he'd been a big, bad guy, guarded twenty-four/seven by four deputy marshals. He hadn't even taken the pistol with him when he ran. He'd left it on the dining table.

“That was when you escaped.” She pocketed the weapon, slung the duffel over her shoulder and around her neck, then led the way down the hall to the rear entrance. “Where did you go?”

“Everywhere. Nowhere. I laid low for a long time. Never slept the same place two nights in a row.” Miserable months. Even the marshals had been better company than he'd found in himself. That was when he'd started thinking there had to
be a better life out there. He wasn't stupid, just a little lax in morals. He could hold a regular job for a regular wage. He could live in the same town and go home to the same house every day. And if he could have a job and a house and a little self-respect, maybe someday—just maybe, he'd thought—he could have a family.

Maybe—he watched Natalia's long, easy steps and the sway of her hips as he followed—
they
could have a family. Or maybe not.

She unlocked the door, easing it open. The parking lot was silent, everything still. She eased out, then gestured to him. Lamps buzzed and a dog in a nearby backyard barked halfheartedly as they circled the building to the street out front. She turned right, and he fell into step beside her.

He pulled his jacket tighter. He'd never lived in the South before, but he was pretty damn sure it wasn't supposed to be this cold. Halos formed around the streetlights, probably ice crystals, because he was already losing contact with his toes.

“They're saying it might snow for Christmas,” Natalia commented.

“If I'd wanted snow, I'd've gone to Chicago. Jeez, I hate the cold.”

“So why aren't you on a beach in Mexico?”

He gave her a wry look. “Because the U.S. has an extradition treaty with them?”

“So
if
you got caught, they'd bring you back and turn you over to the marshals again.” Her shrug said what she left unspoken:
Big deal.

“And either I'd have to testify against the Mulroneys or I'd face charges myself. Either way, odds are I'd end up dead. No, thanks.”

“You can't run forever.”

“No, but I can do my own version of witness relocation. I can get my own documentation, and I can settle down someplace where no one would ever look for me. Besides—” he glanced both directions before stepping off the curb “—you
aren't in Mexico. Going there wouldn't have helped me find you at all.”

She ducked her head but didn't respond to that.

The neon lights of a chain drugstore brightened the night halfway down the block. The parking lot was empty except for a police car backed into an outside space. It was empty, too. Great.

A blast of heat greeted them as they went through the double doors. The cop was standing at the cash register, hands in his pockets, a big ugly gun on his hip. The clerk greeted them, and the cop gave them a once-over and a nod before returning to his conversation.

Natalia headed straight to the hair color halfway down the first aisle, scanning the boxes and quickly selecting a nice, plain brown. Next they got shaving stuff, a cheap bath towel and a pair of scissors, and he grabbed a couple of hoodies on the way to the checkout.

Cops made him antsy—had for as long as he could remember. Of course, he'd had his first run-in with them when he was five. That had been enough to put him off the entire profession for the rest of his life.

“How you doing?” the cop asked as they unloaded their purchases on the counter.

Natalia stiffened, making Josh's grin broader than he'd intended. “We're freezing our asses off. How about you?”

“Yeah, this weather is something. My kids are all excited about the chance of snow, but me, I'll take warm weather any time.”

“I'm with you, buddy.” He pulled out two twenties and handed them to the clerk, then pocketed the change. “Stay warm. And Merry Christmas.”

“Yeah, you, too.”

Picking up the bags in one hand, he steered Natalia toward the door with the other. As soon as they reached the far side of the parking lot again, tension rushed from her body, leaving her soft and warm beneath his palm.

“I hate cops,” she murmured.

“One of the side effects of the life you've chosen.”

She stepped away from his touch, then did something so rare in all the time he'd known her that his feet stopped moving: She told him something personal. “My father was a cop.”

It took him only a second to get his feet working again, quickly enough that he doubted she'd even noticed his hesitation. In their time together, she'd told him exactly three things about her family: the bit about her grandmother, that she had two sisters and that she hadn't seen them in a long time. He didn't even know where she came from.

He couldn't think what to say. His first impulse was to pounce on it, to ask as many questions as he could get out while her confiding mood lasted. Since he knew it wouldn't last, all he managed was a mildly curious, “Where?”

She shoved her hair back, making him wish it was the short, pale brown he was accustomed to.
Hardly enough to run my fingers through,
he'd teased while he did just that. It was soft and fine as silk and he'd liked stroking it while she had stroked—

Oh, man.

“Florida,” she said at last. “Orlando.”

Wow. She was being damn near chatty. “I've always wondered…do families who live in Orlando go to Disney World or is that strictly a tourist thing?”

“Not our family.” Her voice was as flat as her expression was fierce. Did she miss them that much? Or had they been that bad of a nightmare?

“What were they like?”

She kicked a piece of gravel and sent it skittering into the street. “The usual—Mom, Dad, his girlfriend, their two illegitimate daughters and me.”

“Cozy. Mom and the girlfriend didn't object to each other?”

“Mom did. They fought about it a lot. Then he'd hit her and she'd let it drop…until the last time. She said if he wanted Traci that much, she'd get out of his way, and she took a fistful of
pills with a bottle of rum. He moved Traci and their daughters in the day of the funeral.” A long pause. “I was eight.”

She said…
“You were with her?” Josh couldn't keep the shock from his voice. No eight-year-old child should have to see her mother die. It was beyond cruel.

“I couldn't call 911 because he'd broken the phone when they were fighting, and I couldn't go to the neighbor's house because he'd locked us in.”

Her sigh was so heavy and icy that he half expected to hear it shatter when it hit the pavement. How long had she been alone with her dead mother before the bastard had come back home? Had he given a damn about the trauma his little girl had gone through? Had he been the least bit sorry?

One look at Natalia, so stiff and self-contained, answered that.

Jesus.

As he tried to think of something worth saying, they approached the final street before their office building. A tire store sat on the corner, closed up tight. Heaps of old tires stood beside the building beneath a faded sign:
Recycle tires here.
That would make his environmentally-conscious brother happy.

“Listen, Nat—”

“Crap.”
Grabbing his arm, she yanked him toward the tires so hard that he damn near sprained an ankle. He followed her into the tiniest space she could find, burrowing like rats into a hole, and waited, barely breathing, for an explanation.

It came a moment later in the rumble of a heavy engine cruising up the street. They watched through cracks between tires as a black SUV came into sight. It was moving well below the speed limit, and despite the cold, the deeply-tinted windows were rolled down, giving them a good view of Mickey Davison in the passenger seat. His thick head was moving constantly, scanning from side to side, and his mouth was running, as it usually was.

His lungs giving out completely, Josh watched until they drove from sight, then sat down on his butt and exhaled. “Jeez, I'm too old for this shit.”

N
atalia sat down beside him, ignoring the cold that instantly seeped into her jeans. Their space was so tight that her knees were bent practically to her chest, and all she could smell if she looked to the left was rubber.

To the right, it was Josh. His cologne was clean, citrusy, summery, and
he
smelled of danger. Enticement. The promise of pure pleasure.

Why had she told him so much about her family? He didn't care. He couldn't. He hadn't even said
I'm sorry,
though to be fair, he hadn't had much chance. But even back then, most people hadn't known what to say.

Her father hadn't had trouble.
Good riddance. I was tired of her, anyway.

Neither had Traci.
Too bad the bitch didn't take her brat with her.

Josh's breathing slowed. “You think they've been driving around all night looking for us?”

“I guess. After getting their tires fixed.”

“Wonder if they did it here.”

She glanced at the tires that provided them protection, imagining two bearing cuts from her knife, and from somewhere deep inside a laugh escaped.

Josh began chuckling, too. “Don't you know the Mulroneys are pissed at them? Having us cornered, then losing us?”

Her laughter slowly faded. The brothers were damn scary when things weren't going their way, and for a long time now, fate had been smiling the other way.
Find them,
they'd probably ordered Davison and Leeves,
or we'll find you.
And there was no doubt what would happen when they did.

“I bet they're regretting the day they met you.”

“Are you?” He turned to meet her gaze, his expression gone serious. He was closer than she'd realized. If she leaned forward
this
much…but it was an impossible distance to cover.

“Are you regretting the day we met, Nat?”

She tried to look away. Tried to lie. But her mouth didn't care what her brain wanted. Her heart didn't care. “No,” she whispered. “The circumstances, yes, but meeting you? Never.”

Turned out, the distance wasn't so impossible. All she had to do was lean, just a tiny bit. He met her more than halfway, removing her glasses, gripping a handful of her jacket, pulling her the rest of the way. His skin was cold, his mouth undeniably hot as he coaxed her lips open, then slid his tongue inside.

It was astonishing how such simple—such intimate—contact could push everything else out of her mind. The cold, the fear, the alertness she lived with…all forgotten. Meaningless. For the moment only this kiss mattered, this touch, this sweet reminder of what she'd lost.

After a time he pulled back, and for one aching second, she followed him, clinging. With a rush of shame, she caught herself and would have crawled even deeper into the tires if he hadn't held onto her jacket like a lifeline. He stared at her, at a loss for words—probably a first for the slick, sweet-talking con man.

“What's wrong, Josh?” she asked, sliding her glasses on to better see his reaction. “Cat got your tongue?”

He blinked, and his fingers slowly unfolded from her jacket. “You always did remind me of a cat. Sleek. Powerful. Sexy.”

It was her turn to blink. If she'd had to describe herself as an animal, she would have picked a mouse: small, drab, easy to overlook.

Or a rat.

Uneasily she shifted. “Do you think it's safe to go back to the cave?”

He let the intimacy fade as he shrugged his everyday, normal shrug. “We sure as hell can't stay here. Even if we shared our body heat, I'd freeze to death before the sun came up.”

He got to his feet, then gave her a hand up. She took it, wishing she'd removed her gloves, wanting the feel of bare skin against skin.

Not that it lasted long. Once they'd cleared the maze of tires, he released her hand as they walked behind the garage, keeping to its shadows, then jogged to the back door of their building. Once again she picked the lock, and they returned to the break room.

Josh stripped off his jacket, ripped open the hair color package, then held out the scissors. “There's a ten-dollar tip in it if you don't make me look like a whack job.”

Slowly she peeled off her gloves and her own jacket. “You're trusting me with scissors?”

“Honey, you've already got a gun. You don't need scissors to mess me up.” He laid them in her palm, then muttered something under his breath as he swung a plastic chair around to sit on.

It sounded an awful lot like,
You did that all by yourself.

Lacking a comb, she brushed his hair into order with her fingers, counseling herself silently. It wasn't sexy, it wasn't sensuous, it wasn't intimate. It was just a job. Thousands of stylists did it every day to both regular customers and strangers.

But she wasn't a stylist, and Josh wasn't a stranger, and she'd missed touching him, God, so much.

Her first cuts were conservative, taking off a fine spattering
of blond hair. He looked at the floor, then snorted. “Give me the scissors.”

When she did, he grabbed a thick hank of hair and blindly cut it near the roots before handing the scissors back. “Now cut the rest of it to match.”

Obeying, she soon had a broom-worthy pile of hair on the floor. The big cuts were done, leaving her with the finer work, when he spoke again.

“What was it like having two sisters suddenly move in with you?”

Her hand trembled, snipping where she didn't mean to, but it was on the back of his head. He'd never know.

Should she answer? Her old practice of keeping her secrets her own hadn't gotten her anything in the past. Just a man who'd said he'd loved her without knowing that she wasn't worth loving.

When what she needed was a man who could love her even knowing that.

“Just call me Cinderella,” she replied once her hand—and her voice—steadied. “I wasn't exactly popular at home. I talked about my mom. I cried for her. I had nightmares about her. Traci preferred her own daughters, of course, and so did our father. They liked me best when I was locked in the utility room after I'd done my chores. That was where they'd moved me so her girls could have my room.”

She smiled faintly. An aluminum cot, a washer, a dryer and the smell of bleach—that had meant home to her for a long time.

“Did you ever tell anyone?” Josh's tension knotted the muscles in his neck as well as his voice. It was sweet that he could be angry about something that had happened so long ago to a woman who'd betrayed him.

“I tried, but my timing sucked.” She laughed rustily. “It was the day before Christmas break when I told my teacher. She took me to the counselor, and the counselor called a meeting with my father and Traci. They denied it, of course, and in the end, everyone agreed it was the trauma of my mother's death
making me act out, and they took me home… I had two and a half weeks for the bruises to heal before school started again, and I never told anyone else until tonight. Until you.”

He twisted his head to meet her gaze. There was so much in his expression: anger, impotence, sympathy, frustration. “Is your father still alive?”

“Last I heard.”

“Hot-wire a car for us, and we can lead Davison and Leeves right to his door.”

The small, terrified little girl that still cowered inside her smiled at the idea of unleashing the goons on her unsuspecting father. The woman who clung to that little girl, though, couldn't do more than contemplate such a thing. “I don't want him dead.”

“Even after what he did to you? To your mother?”

She shook her head.

Josh rolled his eyes. “And you claim you're not a Goody Two-shoes.”

He turned back so she could finish the haircut. The back and sides done, she moved in front of him to trim the bangs that fell across his forehead to brush his brows. He sat still, his eyelids fluttering shut as bits of hair drifted down onto his cheeks. She held her breath as she leaned close for a final inspection, then murmured, “All done.”

He scrubbed his hand over his face before locking gazes with her again. “You really didn't know they were going to kill me, did you?”

She shook her head, and this time, she thought, he believed her.

He touched her face gently, brushing something away—a snip of hair, a speck of nothing—then stood and pulled a crumpled ten from his pocket. “Here's your tip.”

“From my own money?” She stuffed the bill into her pocket. If they got separated, at least she wouldn't be flat broke.

“Hey, I had some cash on me when I showed up tonight. Not much, but some.” A glance at the clock, and he amended that. “Last night. How long will this color take?”

“A half hour or so.”

“Time to shave, too, and then we'd better be getting out of here.”

“And go where?”

“It's your town. You choose.”

She found a whisk broom and dustpan under the sink and cleaned up while he started the coloring process. Where could they go? It was Christmas Eve, freezing cold and there was an unknown number of killers looking for them.

Her first impulse was simple enough: the Feds. They would arrest her, and turn Josh over to the marshals, who would take him back to Chicago. Maybe she could make a deal with them, too; she knew enough about the Mulroneys' business, especially their activities in Georgia, where they'd ordered the kidnapping and murder of a deputy U.S. marshal, to be of some value to the U.S. Attorney's office.

Maybe she and Josh could go into witness protection together if they survived the trials.

The scent of chemicals stung her nose as she dumped the hair into the trash can. Christmas Eve should smell differently; there should be peppermint and cocoa, pecan pies baking, eggnog and fresh, hot bread. At least, that was what she remembered from the few Christmases before her mother died.

“What will your parents do for Christmas?”

Using vinyl gloves to smear goop into his hair, Josh glanced at her. If he felt melancholy or homesick, it didn't show. “Joe and Liz are driving down Christmas morning to spend a couple of days with them. On Sunday, they're flying to Kansas to visit her family, and Mom and Dad are going on a cruise.”

“Nice.” She'd never met the elder Saldanas, but Josh had always spoken of them affectionately. He'd had a perfectly normal upbringing, he'd told her, with perfectly normal parents. Now that she'd told him of her upbringing, did he have a better appreciation of
normal?

He held up the color applicator bottle. “There's a lot of this left. Wanna get rid of that red?”

Thinking of how much she hated both the color and cut of
her hair, she eyed the bottle. “I thought all men were hot for redheads.”

“Not all. Some of us like plain ol' brown. Sit.”

After a moment, she did as he ordered, and he began working the solution into her hair. Her eyes stung and her nose got sniffly, but she didn't kid herself that it was from the chemicals. She'd been wrong earlier. Having him work on her hair
was
sexy, sensuous and intimate. By the time he finished, she wasn't sure whether she was a boneless mass waiting for him to do what he would or a bundle of raw nerves. Either way, she was wowed.

“Thanks,” she murmured as he threw the gloves away.

He grinned the charm-her-socks-off grin. “You can tip me later.”

She watched the clock while he shaved, then they took turns at the sink, shampooing their hair. After she towel-dried hers, she offered him the scissors. “Cut it, will you?”

He didn't hesitate. In moments, hunks of newly auburn hair littered the floor, and she felt ten pounds lighter. While she swept up, he pulled on a black hoodie, then his coat, and tossed the second hoodie on the table. “We'd better get out of here. Where are we going?”

Natalia's stomach knotted. The break room was the only place she felt safe. Once they set foot outside the building, every person they saw would be suspect. People would be looking for them, and not all of them looked the part of hired killer like Davison. Some of them would look quite innocent. Like her.

But staying here wasn't an option. People would begin coming in soon—if not to actually work, then for the Christmas party the woman last night had mentioned. She tugged the hoodie on, combed her hair back in place, then stuffed their other purchases into her duffel. Sacrificing a few minutes to trade her glasses for the contact lenses in her bag, she pulled on her coat and gloves before giving Josh a this-is-it look. “I think we should turn ourselves in.”

“Yeah, that's funny.”

“I'm serious. You'll be okay, just back with the marshals for a while. And I—I can work something out.”

He propelled her down the hall and to the rear exit. “I don't
want
to be back with the marshals, and you don't want to ‘work something out.' Trust me.”

She dragged to a stop at the door. “What I don't want, Josh, is to hide the rest of my life.”

“You think you won't be doing just that if you make a deal with the Feds? In less than two years, they had me in six states. I never got to go anywhere or do anything. The only time I was alone was in the bathroom and in bed. They drove me freaking crazy. If you want to be the government's prisoner, go ahead, but leave me out of it. I'm not going back.”

She believed that he'd hated every minute of it…but she also believed it was better than dying. Shouldering him aside, sliding her hand inside her pocket to grip the pistol, she eased the door open, looked to the left, then stepped outside, flat against the building, and scanned to the right. Giving him the okay, she shrugged, pulled the hood over her damp hair and said, “At least there would be someone in my life.”

Without giving him a chance to respond, she began walking with long strides toward the street. “Come on. We're taking a bus tour of Augusta.”