On Thin Ice (12 page)

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Authors: Susan Andersen

BOOK: On Thin Ice
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Ivan's voice gentled. “I know you do, Sashala. She wass a good woman.”
“Ivan, do you think . . .” she faltered but then came out with a quetion that had been on her mind quite a lot lately “. . . do you think she knew what was going on with the millworkers? Do you think they took their dislike of me out on her?”
Do you think I should have asked her about it myself instead of being such a coward and waiting until it was too late, the chance forever eliminated?
“No,” he immediately replied. “Remember when you won the Silver and the networks broadcast those signs in your hometown that said, ‘We Love You, Sasha Miller'?”
Her voice was bitter. “Do I ever.” She could still recall her shock when a sports announcer had thrust a mike in her face and asked how it felt to have the support and love of an entire town behind her.
It had felt like the worst sort of hypocrisy.
She could remember going back to her room in the Olympic Village and watching with cynical disbelief the coverage of Kells Crossing millworkers marching through the streets with banners that stretched from sidewalk to sidewalk. Banners that proclaimed their love for her.
“Well, I sink that was for your mama. I sink that when she bragged about you at the mill, they separated their jealousy of you from their respect for her. You were never accepted as one of their own, but your mama wass, and I always sought those banners were their way of showing her their support during the games.”
It was what Sasha had always assumed, also, what she'd
wanted
to believe, so she accepted Ivan's explanation. It was too late to make a difference now, anyway, and she preferred to believe that her mother had remained ignorant of the millworkers' true feelings for her.
There didn't seem to be much to say after that. She appreciated his reassurance over the matter that had been nagging at her for some time, but what Sasha truly needed from Ivan he was unable to give. Shortly thereafter they said their goodbyes and hung up.
Sasha grabbed her skate bag and left her room. No sense brooding; life was full of disappointments. You got used to it.
Besides, she'd promised Lonnie she'd go out to the Dome with him.
 
 
Mick pulled the headset off his ears and punched the rewind button on the tape. Swell. Another conversation that raised more questions than it supplied answers.
He packed away his equipment and backed out of the closet where he'd been sitting on the floor while he listened to the recorded phone tap. Well, one thing he did know now was how J. R. Garland fit into the picture.
Sasha had been whoring for Morrison's job. A simmering anger burned deep in Mick's stomach. She'd had him all but convinced that she was the closest thing to a virgin and all along she'd been whoring for that heroin-pushing son of a bitch.
I've done something tonight I'm not exactly proud of
The memory of her expression that night in the bar, of her tone as she'd said those words, floated across his mind.
Okay, maybe not whoring exactly. But it was damn sure the reason she'd let that old goat put his meaty paws all over her.
The tiny corner of his mind that noted absurdities had no sooner whispered a mocking caution against mixing metaphors than it was snarled into silence by a rage ten times more dominant. Anger rode like a green demon on his back, but he forced it into submission by pure strength of will. He had a job to do here and this wasn't helping.
What was all that stuff about the millworkers being jealous of Sasha and her not being accepted as one of their own? And how the hell could a mother not know that? Maybe he'd better have her background checked more thoroughly. Often, events that happened yesterday affected events of today—it might give him a handle on what made her tick.
I miss Mama.
Mick glanced at the telephone sitting on the night stand next to his bed. That was the one sentence in the whole conversation he would just as soon not dwell upon right now. Just remembering the grief in her voice kicked at something deep in his gut. There'd been such desolation there, intimations of things too late to rectify.
I miss Mama.
He might not want to hear it, but the words, the tone, kept replaying in his brain. Truth was, lives could change in the blink of an eye. You never knew when you might lose someone.
Mick crossed over to the night stand, picked up the receiver, and punched out a series of numbers. Flopping onto his back on the mattress, he snagged the body of the phone, plunked it down on his stomach, and tapped out a tune on the plastic between the disconnect buttons while he listened to it ring on the other end of the line. Then suddenly it was picked up, and his face split into a huge smile.
“Hi,
Mom?
It's me, Micky.”
S
EVEN
A thin envelope was delivered to Mick by special messenger seconds after he hung up the phone. Looking up and down the hallway, he searched for prying eyes, watched the messenger until he disappeared from view, and then closed the door. Hefting the envelope's weight in one hand, he checked his watch for the time on the other. He really didn't have time to go over whatever the agency had sent. Lon Morrison was hitting the ice in twenty-five minutes, and Mick planned to be there. Then again, if its size was anything to go by, this didn't appear to be a missive that would be particularly time intensive . . .
He ripped open the tape-reinforced envelope.
A few minutes later he let the single sheet of paper drift to the table and sat back in his chair. Well . . . that was unexpected. He didn't know why it should catch him by surprise; however—it wasn't as if anything else concerning this damn case had made a great deal of sense so far, so, hey, why start now? He reached forward and picked up the paper to read it through one more time.
With the exception of one dead addict, discovered the day after Mick joined the Follies in Sacramento and believed to have made his purchase from an unknown dealer sometime during the day
preceding
said discovery of body, the string of drug-related deaths connected to this case had come to a halt. The sale of heroin was assumed to have ceased.
Why? Mick wondered on his way over to the Tacoma Dome. And perhaps more importantly, for how long?
His whole career had been one long association with people involved in the sales, distribution, smuggling, or prevention of drugs. He knew the species from one end of the spectrum to the other, from those who profited to those who busted their humps trying to put a stop to it; from drug lords, the top money men who controlled the trade; to mules, the couriers used for smuggling; to Border rats, the Customs and DEA agents who worked the Mexican border. And if there was one thing that was guaranteed, it was that nobody shut down a profitable operation for long. Not without a damn good reason.
It was his job in this case to figure out what that reason was. Well, either/or. Either he figured it out, or he just hanged tough until the operation started up again—and it would. But he was a bottom line kind of guy. And the bottom line was that one way or another he planned to put a halt to it.
 
 
He wasn't exactly knocked on his butt with astonishment when he walked into the arena a short while later and discovered that he wasn't the only one harboring an itch to learn more about Lon Morrison. The old scandal had been resurrected right along with the discovery that Morrison had been hired for the line, and Mick must have heard at least a dozen different people in the past few days hashing it over in all its gory detail. A goodly number of the Follies' skaters had turned out today, apparently to judge for themselves whether Morrison could still skate after more than five years away from the ice.
He could. Even Mick, who was admittedly nobody's idea of an expert, could tell that the man had something.
After watching for a few minutes, he pulled his curious gaze away from the skater going through his paces out on the rink and scanned the arena until he located Sasha in the small crowd seated rinkside. He made his way over to the cluster of skaters.
Through sheer force of personality he cleared a path to his objective. Staking out the seat next to hers, his shoulder jostling her as he settled himself, he nodded to her and to Connie on her other side, but held his silence as he leaned back and gazed out at the man on the ice.
Morrison's hair flashed with golden highlights beneath the overhead lights as he skated backwards, his chin tipped into his shoulder to spot where he was going. He whipped along the perimeter of the rink with respectable speed, then launched into a double toe loop.
“He's gonna screw it up,” Sasha muttered. Surprised, Mick turned his head to look down at her. Her hands were clenched in her lap, her gray eyes fastened on the ice and he looked back in time to see Morrison land on his ass. For no good reason, Mick experienced a little spark of satisfaction.
Connie leaned forward to peer into Sasha's face. “How did you know that?” she demanded.
“He lost his concentration,” Sasha retorted without taking her eyes off the ice. “It always happens when he gets full of himself. Okay, Big Shot,” she muttered to herself as Lon climbed to his feet and shoved off, slowly building up speed once again.
“Focus.”
There was an intimacy in knowing someone as well as Sasha apparently knew Morrison, and it was a familiarity that didn't sit well with Mick. It made him uneasy in a way that he couldn't quite pin down, and it gnawed away at a spot in the depths of his stomach. Whatever the emotion that caused it, it was unwarranted and unwelcome and sure as hell not one he particularly cared to examine too closely. He sternly relegated it to a far corner of his mind.
Morrison's next landing was not perfect but was nevertheless much smoother. “Better,” was Sasha's assessment. She turned to Connie. “He needs work, but not nearly as much as I feared,” she remarked. “I really don't know many who could do so well, having been away from it as long as he's been.” Reaching out with a tactile gesture that was typical of her, she brushed her friend's arm with her fingertips. “Listen, Con, you wanna help?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Go on out and show him the combination for the first number. If I know Lonnie he's gonna be itching for something specific to practice before he's even got his basics nailed down again.”
Connie changed into her skates and climbed to her feet to comply. She met Lon out on the ice and spent a few minutes conferring with him. The moment they understood what she was up to, Brenda and Sara jumped into their skates and joined her. Lonnie and the three women spent several moments in consultation. He watched them demonstrate a series of movements and then all of them skated in slow time through the routine the women had been illustrating.
Sasha's neck was stiff with tension as she watched. She really could have done without the audience here today; this was awkward enough as it was. Witnessing Lon back on the ice after he'd been away from it for so many years was an emotional milestone, one that she couldn't help but feel should have been private between the two of them. Then she rolled her shoulders in an impatient little shrug. Well, as those old philosophers The Stones were so fond of saying, you can't always get what you want. And a damn shame it was, too.
Awareness of Mick beside her, his shoulder warm, pressing against hers, his legs sprawled out, left knee within brushing distance of her right, added to her edginess and served to divide her attention. She kept anticipating, now that Connie was gone, that at any minute he would say something, would crank up the heat he invariably generated whenever they were in contact these days. But he sat quietly. Crowding her as usual in the physical sense, he nevertheless left her a little mental distance.
And the fact that she was so pathetically grateful for an act of thoughtfulness that for all she knew might be entirely accidental served as a pretty good indication of the kind of shape she was in. What was obviously needed here was for her to take a giant step backward, to put some distance between herself and the events that had been unfurling these past few weeks.
The fact did remain, however, that whether he deserved it or not, Sasha did experience a spurt of gratitude toward Mick for having the sensitivity not to push her today. In truth, she didn't think she was up to coping with his high-energy expectations on top of everything else.
Shoot, the real truth here was that she didn't want to have to concentrate on anything beyond her yearning to skate with Lon. It had been so long since they'd skated together and it used to be one of her very favorite things to do. They had a connection on the ice that she'd never experienced anywhere else. With anyone else.
Watching him skate with the three line women, she observed the progress that evolved in the very short time that they advanced from several walk-throughs of the routine to a creditable rehearsal complete with taped music. It was all she could do to simply sit still and watch. She wanted to be out there and if it had been just the two of them, just she and Lon, she would have given him some time to reacclimate—say, ten minutes—and then hit the ice with him.
As it was she felt constrained by all the watchful eyes.
Lonnie apparently labored under no such constraint, for suddenly he bellowed her name.
Sasha jerked in surprise, pushing her shoulder hard into Mick's. “What?” she croaked, in a tone so low she was surprised he even heard her.
Evidently he did. “Get your skates on, sweet thing,” he yelled at the top of his voice, “and get your butt on out here.”
“What am I, your pet dog?” she yelled back. “If you've got something to say to me, Lon Morrison, then come on over here and say it properly!” But she was already toeing off her street shoes and digging through her skate bag.
Seconds later, he stopped with a flourish in front of her. “C'mon, Saush,” he commanded impatiently. “There's a song on this tape we gotta skate to. It's got our name written all over it.”
“Yeah?” Bent over to tighten her laces, Sasha raised only her eyes. She cocked an eyebrow, appraising him with mock coolness. “You harboring the illusion that you can keep up with me?”
“In my sleep, babe.”
“So what are we waitin' for?” Without so much as a glance in his direction, Sasha clambered over Mick's legs and joined Lon on the rink. Mick watched them skate to center ice. He watched them put their heads together, occasionally using hand movements, a sweep of an arm, or tiny steps to pantomime an action.
Connie flopped down next to him. “This should be good,” she said with cheerful enthusiasm. Casting him a glance out of the corner of her eye, she pondered how he was taking this big reunion but was ultimately forced to shelve her curiosity. His face didn't offer any clues and she conceded defeat with a shrug. What Vinicor didn't want known clearly wasn't revealed.
Out on the ice, the huddle broke up. Lon's head lifted and he called out, “Hit it, Sara. And pump up the volume.”
Drums, hot and heavy, pounded out of the speakers. Sasha launched off, skating fast as she swung her hips and ran her hands seductively up her body, outlining thighs, hips, skimming her waist, lightly cupping and lifting her breasts, before extending her arms out in front of her as she rocked her shoulders. The drums were joined by horns and then Don Henley's hoarse tenor asking how bad do you want it, and Lon took off after her in heated pursuit. The song had a driving beat. It was rhythmic, sexy, and Morrison and Miller played it for all it was worth. Lon pulled Sasha up from a fast Death Spiral and hooked an arm around her waist, jerking her close. Their pelvises thrust and bumped, rocking in time to the music with exaggerated sexuality before she broke away once again to lead him on another chase. When he caught up with her, he wrapped his fingers around the back of her neck, crowded up close behind her, and they both bent and swayed in unison. Then she was gone again.
Mick leaned forward in his seat and watched. So this was the much-vaunted Morrison and Miller sex-on-ice act he kept hearing so much about. It was hot enough to generate steam, no question.
Not that he personally gave a damn.
It was a sentiment that probably would have played a lot better if he hadn't ambushed Sasha when he came across her on her own a short while later. Most of the onlookers had drifted away by that point and Mick was himself on the verge of leaving when he crossed paths with Sasha in one of the corridors that led off from the arena.
He had a hot, leaden feeling deep in his gut, and he didn't stop to think matters through when he came abreast of her; he simply reacted. Reaching out, he snagged her by the back of the neck and slammed his body up against hers. “God, you're makin' me crazy,” he said hoarsely, staring down at her. Pivoting on one foot, he backed her into the wall. Then, before she had time to react one way or the other, he was kissing her to within an inch of her life.
Sasha barely knew what hit her. One minute Mick was approaching down the hallway, the next he was all over her. His body was heavy against hers, his mouth was hot and damp and demanding, and so fierce it drove her head into the hand cupping the back of it and then ground that hand in turn into the cement wall. Her sense of self stood up in outrage. Dammit, he couldn't treat her like this.
Yet she was simultaneously compelled by his very aggressiveness. It wasn't civilized and mannerly. It wasn't wooing with sophisticated settings and witty repartee. It was pure animal attraction, tinged with a sense of desperation, and the truth was she felt equally attracted, equally desperate. Most likely she should be fighting it tooth and nail. Instead, she felt a tightening deep between her thighs.
She had just begun to kiss him back when Mick suddenly ripped his mouth way. Breathing raggedly, he demanded, “Was Morrison one of the two?”
“Huh?” She stared up at him with dazed eyes. “Two what?”

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