Fade the Heat (25 page)

As her own soft wheezing brought her back to consciousness, Reagan decided she’d give Darcy Gordon this: When that killer right of hers got through, there was no headache in the world to match it. It was simply
sayonara,
sister. Lights out for a while.

But when Reagan cracked her eyelids open, no ref was standing over her and shouting down the count. And when she tried to push herself off the mat, she smacked her head against something hard, less than a foot above her.

She fell back onto a shuddering, uneven surface, where she realized she wasn’t in the ring fighting Darcy Gordon. Instead, she had succumbed to a far more dangerous opponent—one who didn’t give a damn about the rules.

And one who had locked her in a darkness so complete, she had lost all sense of whether her eyes were closed or open.

Remembering what had happened in the parking lot at Las Casitas Village, Reagan fought the overpower
ing urge to scream. As long as the car remained in motion, she reasoned that her attacker was the only person who would hear her. If he did, he’d likely pull over and beat the hell out of her or worse.

There’s no maybe about it. From the moment that bastard locked you in this trunk, you’ve been a dead woman. He’s only taking you to a more private place to close the deal.

It surprised her, how calmly she was able to envision the likely outcome, as if she were watching a reenactment on one of those crime shows on TV. Suspect pulls into a dark and densely wooded area. Opens the trunk and drags his victim out. Shoots her or caves her skull in with a length of pipe, or maybe he strangles her instead if he’s the hands-on type. Could be he rapes her, too, before or even after. If he feels like it.

Recognizing the onset of shock, Reagan then bit down on her lip so hard, she tasted blood.

The spike of fresh pain catapulted her toward panic. She struggled for air, gasping at the thought that she was going to die once this car stopped—unless this cramped, foul-smelling space got her first.

You’re going to die if you don’t figure something out
, said a rational corner of her brain, one steeped in years of training and experience at the scenes of crimes and accidents.

Once she forced herself to breathe at a more normal rate, the tightness in her chest eased slightly. Soon the flow of oxygen clarified her thinking.

You aren’t some generic, made-for-TV “victim,”
she told herself.
And this is not some faceless bogeyman you can turn off with your remote.

Since she’d been tossed into his car, she was almost certain this was the
patrón
she had heard mentioned at
the complex. Belatedly, her subconscious came up with the translation, and she realized he was Las Casitas Village’s own landlord.

And someone she knew. Reagan remembered having that realization when she had heard the voice, but for the life of her, she couldn’t take the memory one step further. He’d slipped up on her so fast, and her boxing skills had been no match for—

Stop. Right now, it doesn’t matter who he is or what you did or didn’t do.

All that mattered at this moment was escaping. But how?

First off, try the obvious.
Using her hands and then her feet and legs—thank God he hadn’t tied her—Reagan pushed as hard as she could against the trunk lid, only to find it firmly locked. She felt around next, long enough to confirm her suspicion that a car this old wouldn’t have a trunk release.

Now what? She thought of prying the trunk open or dismantling the lock somehow, but she’d need tools for that, and illumination.

So take an inventory. See if he missed anything when he went through your pockets.

She reached for her breast pocket first, her hopes centering on her little flashlight. It was gone. Either her attacker had taken it or it had slipped out when he scooped her up. There would be no light.

The darkness around her took on weight, like the crushing pressure of the blackness deep within an ocean chasm. Squeezing the air out of her lungs, the thoughts out of her brain, the—

“Don’t,” she told herself, imagining how disgusted her old crew would be if she fell to pieces.

But what the hell else would you expect out of a woman?
she heard Beau tell them. Chuckles followed, building to a chorus, then a deafening crescendo of guffaws.

Forget those idiots
, Joe Rozinski’s voice said.
And forget what you don’t have. Just figure out what’s left.

With the flesh prickling behind her neck, Reagan wondered if she was dead already—or so deeply unconscious she could hear communications from a corpse. Shuddering, she thrust aside the thought to search the bottom of the trunk, her hands groping first for whatever hard and painful shape was jammed beneath her shoulder.

A jack, maybe? It felt too big and cumbersome to use as either a pick or a pry bar.

She didn’t stop, pawing through a couple of bags that stank of rancid grease—and made her swear off fast food—some empty cans that smelled like beer, a sack of nails, and what felt like a half-empty box of lightbulbs.

What else could there be?

As she groped around the trunk’s edges, the car turned sharply, then powered up to speed. Her body rolled to one side, jamming against what felt like the spare tire. That wasn’t so bad, but her hip banged against something painfully unyielding.
Please, God, let it be a hammer or a screwdriver or a
—

She fished it out from under her, her hope plummeting at the discovery that it was nothing but a can, probably a quart-size paint container, judging from its ridged rim and its weight.

After pushing it aside, she found a pen, which she gripped for all she was worth. It wouldn’t help her get out, but if her attacker popped the trunk, maybe she could stab him.

A pen against a mountain
, she thought disconsolately.
Or even worse, a pen against a gun.

“You have to go,” Sabrina told Jack softly, reminding him that, in his shock, he hadn’t broken the cell-phone connection.

On the other end, Luz Maria said, “Jack, are you still there?”

Sabrina made a circular motion with the gun barrel, which Jack took to mean he was to excuse himself and hurry up about it.

“I’ll call you later, Reagan,” he said lightly. “I can’t talk about it anymore right now.”

“Reagan? Is something wrong there?” Luz Maria asked him. “Jack, what’s going on—”

He cut her off, hoping she would understand he was in trouble. Sabrina held out her free hand to him. Though it trembled, a vein of iron ran through her words. “Give me that. Right now.”

Jack winced, but he knew better than to contradict a naked woman with a gun. Handing over his cell phone, he tried diplomacy. “Sabrina, you should know I really
don’t
believe it. About the mayor being linked to BorderFree-4-All. Thomas Youngblood’s too smart and too experienced to get caught up in anything so dangerous. So you don’t have to worry about me.”

Sabrina’s expression darkened, her lip curling in a way that all but shouted
Liar.

Realizing he’d insulted her intelligence, he tried another tack. “Not that I’d give a damn if he was. What business is it of mine? I’m going to be running a clinic down in the Valley—a place so far from Houston, it might as well be in another state.”

He saw her waver and realized that Sabrina expected his self-interest. Praying he was guessing right,
Jack pressed his case. “But I have no intention of going down there and living like my dirt-poor patients. I’ll need to take along a generous nest egg, say a hundred thousand dollars?”

To him, it sounded like an outrageous amount of money, but she didn’t even blink. Instead, the handgun’s muzzle lowered. Now he was speaking the language she was used to: greed.

“The money could be problematic,” she said, “if we lose the election…”

“So you’d still like my endorsement?”

“Only if it’s heartfelt. We’ll need to work together to come up with something especially persuasive, something to help your people understand what Winter means to do to them if he’s elected.”

“It would probably be more heartfelt if you’d put that gun away.” He’d never been much of an actor, but he put everything he had into sounding lecherous as he edged closer to the desk that stood between them. His gaze dipping, he channeled every old James Bond movie he’d seen as a kid to say, “For one thing, it’s blocking an exceptional view.”

A slow smile spread over Sabrina’s painted lips, and all at once, her gaze grew languid, heavy-lidded. This was a woman at least as well acquainted with lust as with greed—and far more comfortable with those weapons than with a pistol.

She set the gun down on the desk, but close enough that she could beat him to it if he were inclined to try. She leaned toward him, balancing on her palms on the desk’s surface and bringing her shoulders forward to accentuate her breasts.

Jack couldn’t help noticing the hardness of the nip
ples. Either she was a gifted pretender, or she was really as turned on as she looked.

“You know,” she said, her voice a velvety whisper, “you’re selling yourself short. If we win this election, two hundred thousand wouldn’t be too much to ask. I can get it for you—as long as you keep your little friend from making trouble for us.”

Reagan.
Sabrina thought she knew, because he’d foolishly used her name on the telephone to warn Luz Maria there was trouble.

“I can handle her.” The irony of his claim struck him, considering how badly he’d mishandled their last conversation.

“That’s good,” said Sabrina, her eyes turning cold as flint, “because this city doesn’t need two firefighter funerals within a single month.”

The threat took Jack’s breath away, along with the realization that it had been Sabrina all along, preserving her winning record by any means possible, from bribery to seduction to flat-out murder. Whether or not the mayor knew about it, she must have been responsible for the fire at the apartment complex—and for Joe Rozinski’s death. As the task force had suspected, the crime had been about discrediting Winter, making him look like an inflammatory bigot, all along. Only they’d been barking up the wrong tree. Sabrina might have allied herself with BorderFree, but she’d been calling all the shots.

But she hadn’t set the fire herself. She would have surely bribed or extorted someone else to do her bidding. And Jack had a damned good idea who it was.

Someone who knew both him and Reagan. Someone who took others’ education, even a mere high-school
diploma, as a personal affront. And most importantly, someone who had a huge stake in the flood-control project that would make the Plaza del Sol neighborhood viable once more.

Words rang through Jack’s memory like hammers striking metal:
“I don’t mind telling you, I’ve staked everything there. Every fucking favor, every good deed, every dime. I need this, Joaquín. Goddamn therapists and private programs and nurses are eatin’ me alive.”

His old
compadre,
Paulo, who had tried so hard to convince Jack that he was still a friend. And who would doubtless be the person to kill him if Sabrina said the word.

As the implications detonated inside him, Jack fought back the impulse to launch himself at Sabrina’s gun.

Bad idea
, instinct warned him. Her hand was so close, all she’d have to do was reach out and grab the small revolver. And she would get away with killing him. If her connections weren’t enough to excuse her, the wineglasses at the table, her nudity, and whatever tale she spun about his mistaking her intentions and trying to rape her would surely do the trick.

Leaving her free to rid herself of one last risk.

Reagan.

How could he have been such an idiot, using her name to alert Luz Maria that something had gone wrong?

“Consider Reagan a problem solved,” Jack said, thinking on his feet now that his initial panic had subsided, “because I’m
sure
there’ll be a place for a bright young EMT with me down in the Valley.”

“I’ll be certain that there is.” Ever so slowly, Sabrina stepped around the desk, her gaze locked on his face
with a predator’s intensity. “Hmmm. How shall we seal the deal?”

Unbelievable, how swiftly she moved from death threats to seduction. He took the hand she offered, his grip so firm he saw pain—and not a little fear—flash over her expression.

Before she panicked and reached for the gun with her free hand, he said, “I like it rough, Sabrina. It makes things so much more…elemental.”

She shivered lightly, but both relief and pleasure sparked in her hazel eyes. She apparently understood dark appetites quite well.

Smiling knowingly, she whispered, “Just how rough can you handle? I have…I have some things I think you might like…in my bedroom.”

Jack had the feeling that whatever he found in there would haunt his nightmares for years to come. He breathed a silent prayer that the contents would also offer up the tools to get him out of here alive.

“Well, then, what are we waiting for?” he asked.

Sabrina brought the pistol with her, but she laid it on the dresser when she led him into her bedroom. Perhaps she felt confident that she already had him. Or perhaps her interest in rough sex was more genuine than feigned.

Though the condo’s other rooms bespoke elegant sophistication, it was clear that she had paid particular attention to decorating this space. Jack knew nothing about interior decor, but even he recognized the lavish splendor of the darkly massive furnishings, the tasseled nest of pillows atop a gold-embroidered comforter, and the hand-painted erotic caperings that decorated the domed ceiling above the big four-poster bed.

When she paused expectantly, he told her that he liked it.

She preened in response and said, “From the first moment I set eyes on you, Jack, I sensed that you had better taste than you were letting on.”

It was a not-so-subtle dig at Reagan, but Jack didn’t give a damn. Because at that very moment, Sabrina McMillan opened the door to her armoire—and showed Jack the answer to his prayers.