Kill Shot (4 page)
“We’re friends, Vinnie. That’s all.”
Vinnie made a scornful sound. “You broke his heart, Mick. You can’t go back to being friends.”
She took a deep breath, acknowledging that deep inside, she doubted she and Oz could just be friends. “We’re going to try.” She wished Oz would hurry back with her cameras.
“You better not hurt him again.” Vinnie’s voice held a threatening edge to it. “He don’t deserve it.”
“Get lost, Vinnie.” Oz spoke close to her ear, causing the fine hairs on her neck to stand at attention. The threat in his voice sounded real.
Micki read the hardness in Oz’ gaze as Vinnie nodded at her before retreating to the back of the building.
“That was uncalled for,” Oz said.
“Maybe not.” She shrugged. “He’s been your best friend since forever. He was just trying to protect you from the fearsome me.” She managed to flash something resembling a grin.
“Yeah, well I’m immune now, so do your worst.” He handed her a plastic trash bag. “There’s some dust on the cameras so I put them in here to keep your hands clean.”
“Dust?” Her heart skipped a beat.
“The lab fingerprinted your car and everything in it.”
“Oh great,” she said. “Dust and cameras don’t mix. I need to get them professionally cleaned immediately.”
Oz helped her hail a cab and gave her a warning as he handed her inside. “Don’t take any chances, Micki. We don’t know what this is about, but someone tried to kill you once and it might not have been random.”
She nodded, wondering how she could protect herself when she had no idea what was going on. She directed the cab driver to a camera repair shop on Twelfth Avenue.
#
“The cops sure did a number on this Leica. I’ll have to take it completely apart and clean it. The Minolta too. It’ll be expensive kiddo.” Gus Krum examined the cameras on a soft cloth under a bright light. He wore an enlarging lens on his visor. When he looked up at Micki, his eyes appeared huge and froglike.
Micki sighed in resignation. “They have to be cleaned. Try to give me a break, Gus. You have my whole business tied up there.”
He nodded, his frog eyes bobbing up and down. “Give me a week, kid. I can rent you a loaner for ten bucks a day.”
She groaned, but had no choice in the matter. She left the camera shop with a used Konika in a hard-sided camera case.
Micki took a cab back to her apartment and planned to use the rest of the afternoon getting familiar with her rental camera. She inserted her key in the lock and nudged the door open with her foot. Stepping inside, she fumbled to put her keys in her bag. When she looked up, she froze in position, unable to breathe. Her apartment was in shambles.
She stood in the open doorway, rooted in place. She gazed around in despair at the total wreckage that remained of her once tidy nest.
Fear washed over her like a wave pounding her down into the undertow. Pulling her cell from her purse, she flipped it open. Her first thought was to contact Oz, but she recalled his admonition to call nine-one-one instead.
What if I’m not alone?
She surveyed the chaos, torn between the desire to check the damage or go running down the stairs. She held her breath, listening for any sound. An eerie silence led her to believe that those responsible for the destruction had gone.
A man with a pony tail stepped from behind the door.
She turned at the sound and he punched her in the face, wrenching the strap of her new camera case from her shoulder as she fell to the floor.
#
CHAPTER THREE
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just let me get up.”
Oz loomed over her, his brows drawn together. “You’re not fine. Shut up, lay down and let them examine you.” He looked worried as opposed to angry. He stepped away and an ambulance attendant took her blood pressure while another blinded her by shining a flashlight in her eyes.
Micki stared up at the ceiling in her entryway, following the bright haloes of light echoing off her retinas. “How did you get here? I specifically didn’t call you.”
One of the EMT’s hailed Oz. “I think she’s talking to you, Officer.”
He glowered down at her. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“You told me not to. I didn’t even have a chance to call nine-one-one.”
“I think she’s delirious, sir,” the young EMT said.
Oz grunted. “No, she’s always confusing. One of your neighbors called nine-one-one and dispatch cross-referenced your name to the shooting in the park.” He let out a sigh. “Does it make any difference how I got the call? I’m here now.”
Micki raised her hand to her throbbing head, tentatively touching the area close to her eye. “Ouch! What’s wrong with me?”
“Don’t ever give me a straight line like that.” Oz squatted down to her level. “You have what is referred to as a mouse. A real shiner.”
“A black eye! He hit me. Yes, I remember.” The tissue around her eye was swollen and tender.
“You saw your attacker?”
“Clearly.” She glimpsed movement at the periphery of her vision and swiveled her head. An officer scooped debris off her floor. “Oh, just look at my apartment,” she wailed. “The computer! He smashed my computer.”
“It’s okay, Micki. It was just a computer.” Oz sounded reasonable, but he had no idea of the enormity of her loss.
“That computer is my business. I use it to print and store picture files.” She struggled to get up, but several pairs of hands restrained her. “Please, I...I have to see.”
Oz nodded and lifted her to her feet. She swayed dizzily for a few moments, reeling from the carousel spinning in her head and from the carnage around her. Several people, including two uniformed officers were examining the items strewn on the floor.
“My stuff is so trashed,” she wailed. “Oh, noooo! He took the memory card out of the USB port.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Oz tried to hold her steady.
“I left the memory card from my camera in the port to the computer. It holds three hundred shots and it was full. It had the pictures I shot yesterday.”
Oz lowered her onto the gurney. “I was wrong. She’s delirious. Take her to the hospital and don’t let her walk until I have personally come to question her.”
“Oz!”
The EMTs strapped her to the gurney and raised the legs, sending a pounding pain to her head.
“Oz!”
“I can’t hear you. Go with these trained professionals and be nice.”
“My camera! That guy took my camera.”
Oz stopped the gurney. “What camera?”
“He jerked the new camera case off my shoulder. I just rented it. Oh freakin’ great! What else can happen?”
“Don’t ask.” He stared hard into her eyes and rested his hand on her forehead for a moment. “I’ll see you at the hospital.”
The problem with having a big, hunky, alpha-male ex- boyfriend is that he always thinks he knows what’s best for you and that he has the right to impose his views on you. Micki considered the pros and cons of the situation as she was being loaded into the ambulance.
Someone shot at her and now someone had broken into and trashed her apartment. Clearly, the two acts were connected and the shooting wasn’t random as she had hoped.
With the wail of a siren adding another dimension to the pain throbbing in her head, the ambulance transported Micki to Saint Andrew’s Hospital at mid-town, where radiology scanned her head as though it contained hidden treasure.
A haggard-looking young doctor came into her cubicle to examine her. He appeared to have been on duty longer than his allotted shift. A scraggly beard sprouted from his chin and the front of his scrubs had a fresh spatter of something Micki didn’t want to think about.
His smudged glasses had slipped to the end of his nose. He frowned at her over the rims. “It says here I’m not to release you until an Officer Osmond comes to pick you up. Are you under arrest?”
Micki groaned. “I need to go home. Someone broke into my place. Even now, people are tromping all over my stuff.” She was nodding her head, but each movement brought a shower of pain like mini fireworks going off behind her eyes.
The doctor nodded too, giving her a pill to calm her down and another one for pain. He instructed her to continue lying down with an icepack on her bruised face. The cubicle was curtained off from the rest of the ER and before she knew it she’d fallen asleep.
At some point during the time she slept, Oz appeared. She heard his deep voice as he talked to the doctor, although she couldn’t force her eyes to open.
“How did you get her to stay?” Oz asked.
“I gave her something to help her relax.”
“You doped her?” Oz gave a snort of laughter. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
The voices faded and she slept for several hours. When she awoke she’d been transferred to a room. Oz was sitting beside the bed.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“We’re in the observation unit. The doc didn’t want to admit you so he’s just looking at you.”
“What are you doing here?” She struggled to sit up.
A smile tweaked the corners of his mouth. “I’m looking at you too.” He raised the head of the bed with the remote.
She felt groggy and disoriented. “I feel worse than before. What was in the pills he gave me? I didn’t sign any papers for treatment.”
Dark eyes devoured her; challenged her. “I did. I told them you were my wife. Are you going to sue me?”
“Jerk.”
“Good to see you’re back to normal.”
“I need to go home.”
“I’ll take you home.” He pushed the call system and a voice asked what they needed. “She’s awake. Tell the doc to release her.”
Micki folded her arms and glared at Oz. “Do you always get everything you want?”
He shot her a dark glance as he left the cubicle. “Not everything.”
A Nurse Aide entered and helped her find her shoes.
She was forced to ride in a wheel chair to the front entrance where Oz waited for her. It was already dark.
How long was I asleep? What’s happening at my place?
She squinted at Oz, still dizzy and lightheaded.
He helped her into the passenger seat and belted her in before silently easing the car into gear.
When they pulled out from under the portico, a light rain was falling. It looked golden in the street lights and made the roads appear black and oily.
Her head throbbed rhythmically in time to the windshield wipers.
Oz drove silently, glancing at her from time to time.
She pulled down the mirror behind the visor and observed her battered image. “Pretty scary.” She touched the bruised area on her cheekbone and the half-circle below her eye. “It looks like I missed with the eye shadow.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Oh, that makes me feel so much better.” She shut the mirror with a snap. “Hey! This isn’t the way to my place.”
“I said I was taking you home. My home.”
A swarm of butterflies flew formations in her chest. “Oz, I can’t stay at your place.”
He pulled into the underground parking at his apartment and found his assigned space. He switched off the ignition and turned in his seat to face her.
“I’m only going to say this once and I don’t want any argument.” He gazed at her solemnly, letting the effects of his words sink in.
Micki bit back the retort that sprang to mind and nodded her head.
“Someone is after you. He shot at you and he punched you in the face. He ransacked your place and destroyed your property. He took your camera bag. I will not let him get to you again. Got that?”
The significance of his words caused a shiver to run down her spine. She nodded again, feeling like a king-sized bobble head. “But...” She started to protest but he laid a finger on her lips to silence her.
“You’re going to stay with me, because I’m the meanest son-of-a bitch around and I’ll take care of you. I know you don’t want to be taken care of, especially by me, but that’s the way it’s going to be.”
She swallowed the tangle of razor wire at the back of her throat.
Oz held her gaze. His face wore the ‘Take no prisoners’ expression.
She nodded silently and moistened her dry lips.
Oz seized upon her gesture. He gazed at her mouth hungrily before expelling a long breath and getting out of the car. He slammed his door a lot harder than necessary.
Where did he get off ordering her around like a child? She lolled against the headrest as Oz rounded the car and wrenched her door open.
Micki was vaguely aware that the drugs she’d been given were influencing her compliance as she allowed Oz to draw her from the vehicle and tuck her under his arm.
Being smushed against him wasn’t so bad. Her face hurt, her legs were leaden, her head pounded and she was emotionally drained from her trauma-inducing adventures. Yet, it wasn’t so bad having Oz put his arm around her.
She stumbled against him and he swept her up into his arms. Her whole body stiffened for a nanosecond. She had to protest. He was taking too much for granted. She should stop him right here and now.
