Deadly Pursuit (3 page)

Katie didn’t miss a beat, smiling up at him with Nancy Reagan-esque adoration. “Amara can’t be taught. But I’m happy to be your bunny if you, you know, need one in vanilla.”

He grinned at Katie, and Amara seethed with something ugly, almost like jealousy, but then his words registered with her brain. That was a compliment, right? Chocolate bunny? It was also a condescending endearment offensive to anyone with a pair of ovaries, and of course she hated it on principle, but … did that mean she’d caught his eye?

“Where’s Judy?” Katie wondered, referring to their waitress.

“Went home sick,” Jack told her, still favoring her with the brilliance of his smile.

Amara tried to recapture his attention. “I—I’m sorry.”

He glanced over at Amara, his jaw tightening.

“I just … I’m really hungry and the noodles are really good, so—”

The irritation vanished and he faced her, one corner of his incredible mouth creeping up into the wicked half smile of a man with one thing on his mind, and it wasn’t food. To her utter astonishment, he gave her a pointed and assessing once-over, nearly searing the bodice of her dress off her body with the intensity of his gaze.

That look was about the rudest thing she’d ever experienced in her life.

It was also the sexiest.

“Why didn’t you say so, Bunny?” he murmured. “I made the noodles. And I’m happy to let you taste anything of mine whenever you want.”

If there was the teeniest doubt in her mind that he was trying to be as obnoxious and insulting as possible, the tiny wink he gave her cleared it up. Amara gaped at him, stammering. Her skin felt so hot it had to be purple by now.

Turning to Katie, who was also drop-jawed, the cook flashed a pleasant, dimple-revealing smile, the kind he sprinkled liberally on everyone else in the universe, but never Amara. “More coffee, Katie?”

Wait a minute.

Amara’s belated outrage finally kicked in and, fuming, she eyed her own glass, which held only a couple of melted ice cubes and the sad dregs of a Diet Coke. How come his over-the-top nasty talk had her all hot and bothered? And how about a refill on
her
drink?

“Umm … yeah.” Katie simpered under his attention until Amara wondered if she wouldn’t slither onto the table and undress in an impromptu striptease for his special benefit. The killer prosecutor turned to vanilla pudding right before Amara’s disbelieving eyes. “More coffee’d be great.”

“How’s the trial going?” The cook kept his back firmly turned on Amara and refilled Katie’s cup from his steaming carafe. “Another conviction, you think?”

Katie seemed to recover some of her composure, which was more than Amara could do. “Absolutely. Unless I can get Amara to plead out.”

Royally pissed off and telling herself it had nothing to do with being crudely propositioned by the world’s
haughtiest cook or jealousy over his attention to Katie, Amara let her quick temper get the better of her.

“I’m not pleading out,” she told Katie, and then glared up at the cook. “I need another Diet Coke, if you can stop flirting with customers long enough to do your job. And my name’s not
Bunny.
”

Oh, God. There was that look again, that flash of mischief that dried out her mouth and sent shivers chasing over her skin.

“No problem, Sugar. Just let me know what you want me to call you, and I’m there.” With that, he strode back to the kitchen, leaving the women to admire his ass as he went.

“Oh, my God,” Katie breathed. “He wants you.”

Amara clenched her hands in her lap to stop the embarrassing tremble of her fingers. To think she’d been attracted to that jerk. Hah. He’d cured her of that, hadn’t he?

And yet …

She felt hot-wired and unreasonably alive, as though someone had strung a power cord along her spine and it was shooting sparks through her body.

“He’s only yanking my chain because he’s a jackass.” Working hard to sound normal, she waved at her laptop to remind Katie of the business at hand. “Can we wrap this up? I really have to get cracking here.”

Katie frowned, looking resigned. “So no deal?”

“You know I’ve got reasonable doubt,” Amara said with a conviction she didn’t feel. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here doing your Monty Hall routine. Your office shouldn’t have brought the charges in the first place, and it wouldn’t have if this wasn’t a senator’s son and you weren’t trying to show taxpayers how tough on crime you are. No deal.”

Rolling her eyes, Katie slid out of the booth, flipped a couple of bills on the table, and grabbed her things. “See you in the morning, then. Tell Chef Hottie I’ll dream of him tonight.”

They both laughed, and Amara watched as Katie went through the glass door and disappeared into the night. The diner was empty now except for one of the other regulars, a senior citizen named Esther, who sat at the Formica counter flipping through the paper as she ate her pancakes. Amara was looking back at her screen when the cook reappeared with a new Diet Coke and handed it to her.

“What’d you do to Katie?”

Amara took a sip and tried not to bristle at the implication that she’d driven Katie away, which, she supposed, she had. “She left.”

“Drove her away, eh? That probably happens to you a lot, Bunny. You should work on being less abrasive. You might make a friend or two.”

Ouch. The mouthful of soda soured to vinegar on her tongue.

Though he couldn’t know it and she’d die before admitting it, his barbed arrow hit its mark because people, generally speaking, didn’t like her.

Her personality, it turned out, was a little caustic. Not that she was into self-analysis or anything, but it was probably because she’d grown up in foster care. Maybe she’d developed a defense mechanism to keep people away, not that crowds were knocking down her door trying to get close.

Anyway, that was how she was wired. If she wanted to get something, she got it, and if she wanted to say something, she said it. Sure, this turned some people off, but she didn’t have time to smooth over people’s
hurt feelings. Plus, she couldn’t easily turn off her defense attorney’s fighting instinct outside the courtroom, which resulted in her plowing her way through life. Hazard of the job.

So, yeah, nobody liked her, but it was rude of him to say it.

Incensed, Amara recovered her speaking abilities and got over the whole intimidation thing. This guy may be a god sent down from Mount Olympus to torment womankind with lust, but he was still an arrogant SOB who needed a smackdown.

“I think you’ve got the market cornered on abrasive,
Honey,”
she said.

Uh-oh. Wrong tactic. Abort—
abort.

That hint of wickedness came back into his expression, not so much a smile as the disquieting light of amusement in his eyes. Planting his palms on the table, he leaned down, right in her face. “I like the endearment, Bunny. Got anything else for me?”

“My name is Amara Clarke. Use it.
Honey”
She extended her hand, wondering exactly how rude he was prepared to be.

The simple gesture took him by surprise.

For several long beats, he didn’t seem to know what to do. For all his smirking bravado, she realized, he didn’t want to touch her. His ambivalence was so strong she could almost stick her tongue out and taste it.

Dark eyes sparking, brows lowered, he glared, apparently cursing her to hell and back for all eternity. Then his gaze wavered and he looked down his straight nose to her hand. Finally, as though he’d never participated in a handshake before and wasn’t quite sure how
the procedure worked, he reached out and grasped her hand in his firm grip.

Holy God.

There was no preparing for the current of electricity that surged through her body when their palms connected. Nor could she explain the flow of blazing heat between them, which was disproportionate to anything a human being should be able to generate.

His expression was, for once, unreadable. “Jack. Patterson.”

He pumped her hand twice, an unremarkable, socially acceptable handshake, and then let go. Without another word, he turned and walked back into the kitchen, leaving the door flapping after him.

Sacramento

“Ooh, Baby, Baby” played over and over again in the car on the way home from dinner. The Smokey Robinson version first, of course, then Linda Ronstadt.

They sang together at the top of their lungs, being silly because this much joy refused to stay quietly bottled up inside. Only when they rolled down their quiet street and into the driveway of the duplex they rented did Ray Wolfe turn the music down a little; he didn’t want the neighbors talking about them as they walked their dogs tonight. The car idled while they waited for the garage door to open.

“Why are we singing this song?” Joyce giggled. “It’s about
breakups.”

“Yeah, well.”

Shrugging, he lifted a hand off the steering wheel, reached under his wife’s filmy flowered skirt, and slid his fingers up her smooth, bare thigh. Her low, throaty laugh and corresponding shiver tightened his groin.

“Stop,
Ray.” Squirming and darting a guilty glance
out the window and across the lawn to see if anyone was on the porch next door and within seeing distance, Joyce smacked his hand away. “Just focus on getting us inside the garage, okay?”

He laughed, navigated the Accord into the cluttered garage, and put it in park. She reached over and hit the remote clipped to his visor, and the garage door hummed again, lowering behind them.

“Let me see it.”

Rolling her eyes, Joyce slapped the strip of shiny black and white photos into his waiting palm, and he frowned down at it. “I’m not sure this is a kid, Joy. Looks like a bean to me.”

“Come on.”

“I’m just saying.” Leaning across the armrest, he kissed her smiling mouth. “Do we have any other proof you’re pregnant?”

“Hmmm.” She stroked her tongue across his bottom lip. “Well, the doctor said so.”

“True.” Opening as she demanded, he kissed her long and deep—until her eyes glazed and he felt his pulsing blood sizzle through his veins. “Anything else?”

“Well.” She lifted his hand and pressed it to her newly enormous breasts, which, much to his fascination, now required a larger cup size. “Don’t forget
these.”

“How could I forget?” He smiled because his beautiful wife was pregnant, he was about to get some, and life was good. “Let’s go, Joy.”

He got out of the car.

And came face to face with a figure dressed head to toe in black.

A long beat passed.
There’s someone in the garage,
he thought, bewildered.

Someone …

Then his sensual daze cleared.

Jerking to full attention, he dropped back into his seat and dove for the Sig Sauer he kept underneath it.

The assassin backed up a step and raised a steady gloved hand.

Joyce gasped with horrified comprehension.

Even as his fingers closed around his gun’s butt, Ray knew it was too late.

He was a dead man, but then he’d been a dead man for months.

Staring down the length of a silenced pistol, his last thoughts raced through his head:

Why had he thought he could protect Joyce from Kareem Gregory?

Why didn’t they ask the doctor whether the baby was a boy or a girl?

Was
Jackson dead already?

“Run, Joyce!”

Ray raised his weapon and prayed he could buy her time to—

His world exploded with a muted
pop,
and there was nothing.

Payton Jones pumped a second shot into Ray’s forehead, waited while he dropped and, being careful not to step in the blood and leave behind a footprint like the one in the Simpson/Goldman murders, edged around the man’s crumpled body as it dangled half in and half out of the car.

There was more work to do.

The screeching wife had backed into a bike hanging on hooks against the far wall, her screams echoing
off the concrete floor like cannon fire. She really needed to knock it off before a Dudley Do-Right neighbor stopped by to investigate, and time was a-wasting.

The first tap to her forehead shut her up and splattered the bike—damn, it’d looked like a nice one, too—with bits of brain and what looked like ten gallons of blood. The second tap wasn’t really necessary, but was good procedure, just in case. Another quick squeeze of the trigger, and it was done.

Her face frozen in an eternal, wide-eyed grimace, she tumbled out of view behind the car. A long, crumpled strip of black and white paper—a picture, maybe?—fell out of her limp fingers and hit the ground with her.

Ahhh,
silence.

Now it was time to clean up and get the hell out of Dodge.

All in all, this’d been a nice day’s work. It felt pretty good, the satisfaction of an operation run by the book. The money would feel pretty good, too.

Payton smiled.

A nice rare steak would be great for dinner tonight, maybe with a baked potato. Oh, and chocolate cake of some kind, with ice cream. Yeah. That’d be nice.

But first things first: ditch the stolen car with its stolen plates and steal new ones for the long drive back home, all before the cops got wind of this nice handiwork.

Picking up the four shell casings and then the duffel bag from the corner where it’d been stashed, Payton walked to the side door leading to the backyard, which had a flimsy joke of a lock, and glanced
around one last time, just to survey the scene and make sure there were no clues, no giveaways.

There weren’t.

“Dumb fuck.”

Who were these two? Payton didn’t know and didn’t need to know, just like there was no need to know who’d ordered this hit. You couldn’t build too many layers of protection into these operations; keeping things on a need-to-know basis was better for all concerned. One fun fact had trickled down through the grapevine, though, and Payton squatted, considering it.

The man’s vacant eyes stared off at the ceiling even as his blood formed a red halo around his head where it rested on the concrete. Payton leaned over the body and gave a bit of valuable, though posthumous, advice.