On Thin Ice (19 page)

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Authors: Susan Andersen

BOOK: On Thin Ice
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Yeah, it sounded weak to him, too. “Call Dello and ask him,” he retorted without hesitation and made a mental note to call the Follies' CEO first.
“Don't think that I won't, Mick.”
“I'm counting on it, honey. He'll confirm that I'm here to help stop drugs, not to traffick in them. Listen, Saush, would I have told you about Pete last night if I thought you had anything to do with drugs? It would've been incredibly stupid, don't y'think?” And so he had thought just this morning. Right now it seemed like the smartest move he had made since beginning this case.
He stepped forward to remove her jacket from her hands. “And I'll tell you something else, darlin',” he added, glad to be able to divulge something that was one hundred percent honest. “If there was a sexual thrill to be had here, it was all mine. I never once made love to you for any other reason than—”
The bedroom door slammed opened and Amy Nitkey, one of the lighting techs, burst into the room. She stumbled to a stop just over the threshold when she saw Mick and Sasha standing there. Discomforted by the palpable tension surrounding them, she stammered, “Oh, hey, sorry. I didn't know anyone was in here.”
“Yeah, do you mind?” Mick inquired politely. “We'd like just a few more minutes' privacy.”
“Sure. Just let me grab my coat, okay? I gotta run out to the car for a pack of smokes and it's coming down cats and dogs out there.”
Mick looked at the stack of coats nearly three feet deep, saw by Sasha's face that she was maybe seconds away from getting ready to cut and run, and tossed her letterman's jacket to Amy. “Here, use this. There's an umbrella over there by the door, too.”
Amy took one look at the expression in his eyes and shrugged. “Yeah, sure. I'll get this back to you in just a few minutes, Sasha.” Then she was gone.
Mick immediately turned back to Sasha, not waiting for her to lambast him for that, too. “You gotta believe me, Sasha. I do not take drugs. Call Dello. Talk to my mother. Come with me to a doctor and I'll piss in a bottle or get a blood test. Jesus, I can probably get you a dozen affadavits by tomorrow afternoon.”
Then, stepping close, he squatted slightly to bring their faces on a more equitable level and reached out to brush her hair off her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I'll understand if you need more proof than my word before you can trust me on that,” he said. “But if you take nothing else on faith, believe this. The
only
reason I've ever made love to you is because I can't be near you without wanting it so bad it nearly rips me apart. I swear that to you on my mother's life.”
And Sasha believed him because she had to. No one else had ever made her feel the way Mick Vinicor did. She was a highly disciplined woman who before this man entered her life had never known it was possible to be reduced to a being who was all nerve endings and instincts. It would simply destroy something inside of her to believe it had all been a sham, a deliberate attack on her senses.
She nodded.
“I don't suppose you want to stay with me tonight, though, huh?”
She was opening her mouth to tell him he supposed correctly when they became aware of a horrendous commotion breaking out downstairs.
E
LEVEN
Only a short while ago, Connie had been searching for Sasha. Not for any particular reason, she simply hadn't seen her in a while and wondered where she'd gotten herself off to. Consequently, when Connie entered a new room at the party she'd ask around to see if anyone had seen her.
“Find Vinicor,” Lon Morrison advised somewhat sourly from a stool at the bar in the family rec room where he was watching a game of pool in progress. “She seems to be firmly attached to his hip these days.”
Connie cocked an eyebrow. “Sour grapes, Mr. Morrison?”
“Not at all, Miss Nakamura. Just a statement of fact.”
For the first time, Connie looked at Morrison through eyes not biased by previous knowledge. She knew her opinion of him had a tendency to be less than rose colored—it was sort of a knee-jerk protectiveness of Sasha. Connie felt that for a supposedly very good friend, Lon had treated her friend shabbily.
It seemed sort of dog-in-the-mangerish, however, to hold it against him when Sasha didn't. And Saush had gone out of her way to relate Lon's fierce defense of her back in their high school days. Returning his steady gaze, Connie came to the conclusion that perhaps it wasn't up to her to sit in judgment of him.
Before she could do more than nod curtly to acknowledge something of what she was thinking, however, Greg Lougynes, a huge, ponytailed roadie, twisted around to look at her over one massive shoulder. He was bent over the pool table, where he prepared to sink the four ball. “I saw Miller a coupla minutes ago,” he said in his hoarse, gravelly voice. “She was headed out to her car.”
Over by the fireplace, Karen Corselli's head came up. Rising casually to her feet, she tucked her purse under her arm, excused herself from the group she'd been visiting with, and, picking up her empty glass, left the room.
“Her car?” Connie echoed after a moment of blank surprise. Her slender black eyebrows drew together in perplexity. “Whatever for?”
“Smokes, I think she said.” Lougynes sank the four ball and his gaze on the felt, walked around the table setting up his next shot.
“But Sasha doesn't smoke.”
Greg's big shoulders moved in an indifferent shrug. “I'm just telling ya what I heard, Nakamura. I looked up when I heard someone say they was going out in this rain, and I saw Miller walking out the door. Ain't no mistakin' that coat of hers.”
“Well, that's odd.” Connie's eyes met Lon's across the room, and the looks they exchanged were equally bewildered. Then she shrugged and gave the man at the pool table a weak smile. “Thanks, Greg. I didn't mean to jump all over you.” It wasn't his fault if she couldn't make sense of it.
“No problem.” He sank the two and six balls in rapid succession. Straightening, he frowned in thought while he chalked up his pool cue. “You know, now that you mention it, the hair didn't look like Sasha's. I just saw that wooly ‘Follies on Ice' on the back of the red jacket and figured—” His big shoulders rolled uncomfortably. “But come to think of it, her hair wasn't as dark as Miller's and I don't think it was as curly, either.”
Connie shrugged. “Then I imagine Sasha must've lent her coat to someone.” That made more sense than Saush going out in this weather for cigarettes that she'd never smoke. Connie decided to check in the kitchen for her friend; perhaps she'd find her there.
She had barely cleared the rec room door when a woman outside began to scream.
 
 
It was a sound guaranteed to draw a crowd, and it did exactly that. Every single party-goer rushed outside.
Dave DiGornio and his father ran toward the street and the woman who had screamed was huddled on the patio under the eaves, pointing after them with one quivering hand, the other clamped to her mouth. Trembling uncontrollably, she tried to answer the barrage of questions that came like bullets from all sides. The volume from so many people all talking at once rose to cacophonous levels.
“What the hell is going on out here?” Mick's authoritative voice cut through the babble, leaving a momentary silence in its wake. Dragging Sasha behind him, he plowed through the crowd and stopped in front of the trembling woman. He dropped Sasha's wrist and reached out to grip the woman's shoulders in firm hands. “Are you okay, Cathy?”
She made a reply, but he couldn't hear it over the voices that had resumed their excited chatter. The decibel level had once again escalated and he impatiently jerked around to face the people surrounding them. “
QUIET!
” he roared.
A sudden silence fell, and he turned back to the trembling woman. “Now. Are you all right?”
“Oh, God.” She pointed a shaking finger at the arterial that divided the expensive, sprawling homes from the lake. “A woman was h-hit by a c-car out there.” Tears poured down her cheeks. “It hit her so h-hard she
flew,
Mick. And then it just k-k-kept on going!”
“Is anyone out there checking her condition?”
“Y yes.” She nodded her head and then couldn't get it to stop. She had to reach both hands up to hold it still. “Dave and Mr. DiG-Gornio and I were talking out here and they . . . and they're . . .”
“Okay, Cathy, you're doing fine.” He looked up. “Somebody grab her a cup of coffee, please. And put some sugar in it.” He looked at the crowd gathered around them. “Someone needs to call an ambulance.” His gaze traveled swiftly from face to face; it stopped on the third one it saw. “Morrison. Call nine-one-one.”
“Gotcha.”
“People,” Mick ordered. “Get out of the rain.” He reached out and snagged Sasha's wrist again, pulling her near. “Take care of Cathy,” he said. “She needs to be wrapped up and kept warm to combat any shock she may be in. I'm gonna go see what I can do for the woman who was hit.” Mrs. DiGornio arrived just then with a large mug full of steaming coffee, which she extended to Mick. He took it and handed it to Sasha. “Get it down her.” Turning back to Mrs. DiGornio, he briskly requested blankets, umbrellas, and a tarp if she could lay her hands on one quickly.
Their hostess conscripted the services of several of the people standing around and the items he required were promptly rounded up. Within moments, Cathy, wrapped in a blanket and clutching the cup of coffee in both hands, was being led indoors, and Mick, hugging a tarp, an umbrella, and two blankets, was jogging down the gradual, grassy slope to the street.
Dave DiGornio and his father were squatting on the sidewalk in the pouring rain. They were soaked to the skin. Except for one camel-colored leather sleeve and a pale hand with short, narrow fingers that curled toward the sidewalk on which she lay, Mick's view of the woman sprawled facedown in front of the two men was blocked by their drenched backs. He walked around Dave and stopped dead in his tracks.
This wasn't the stranger he had expected. The woman on the ground was wearing a jacket that was very familiar to him. Of deep red wool with a silver wooly
JOLLIES ON ICE
in cursive across the back and a skating patch on the camel leather of its left sleeve, there was only one jacket like it in the world and it belonged to Sasha Miller.
“Ah, Jesus,” he said hoarsely. “It's Amy Nitkey.”
 
 
Without interrupting his gentle search for broken bones, Dave DiGornio shot a glance up at Mick over his shoulder. “Whataya, blind, man? It's Sasha Miller.”
“No,” Mick retorted firmly, squatting down next to him. “It's Sasha's jacket, but that's Amy.” He popped open an umbrella, set it up to shelter the fallen woman's head, then reached out to gently pull her hair away from her face. Even with her head turned away from them the identity was clear.
“I'll be damned,” Dave murmured and helped Mick set up the tarp to form a rough shelter over the fallen technician. “It is Amy.” He looked over at Mick. “She's got a weak pulse, but to tell you the truth that's about all we've been able determine—that she's still alive. She's getting soaked here, but we're afraid to move her in case she's got a spinal injury. Oh, good, you brought blankets,” he added as he watched Mick snap one out and cast it over the injured woman. He pulled off the coat that had been covering her and tossed it to his father. “Dad, put this back on before you catch your death.”
“What the hell happened, Dave?” Mick demanded. “Cathy said it was a hit-and-run?”
It was his father who replied. “It happened so damn fast I'm still reeling,” he said. “The three of us were out talking on the patio and we heard the car accelerate, but our view of it was blocked by the laurel hedge. And I don't know about Cathy and Dave but I didn't give it much thought—I assumed it was just another car going too fast. That's been a growing problem in our neighborhood. Then, too, we didn't know that there was anyone in the street.”
Mick looked at the thick, lush hedge. It was a good ten feet high and had probably been grown for that express purpose, to muffle traffic noise and provide privacy.
“We all looked down there, though, at the sound of a car gaining so much speed.” Dave picked up the narrative. “And the next thing we know, there's a muffled thump and this woman's literally flying through the air. Cathy started to scream, but even over the noise she was making we could hear the car pick up speed again.” He shook his head, incredulous that anyone could be so coldhearted as to mow someone down that way and then simply flee. “Dad and I moved, let me tell you. Even so, by the time we got down here the car was already gone.”
“Can you describe it at all?”
“No lights, medium sized, and I think it might have been dark red, but I'm afraid I'm not positive about that,” Dave supplied unhelpfully and his father nodded. “Had to have been a drunk.”
Probably. But Mick looked down at Sasha's jacket on the rag-doll stillness of Amy Nitkey's body and shivered.
 
 
Sasha folded the heavy plastic bag that held her jacket over her arm and shivered. She looked up at Mick, who had just handed it to her and now stood on the other side of the threshold of her hotel room doorway. “How is she?” she asked.
Mick rubbed a weary hand over his chin. “Let me come in, Sasha.”
She was all cool poise when she replied, “I don't really think that's a good—”
“Please.”
She stepped back, holding the door open for him.
He walked straight to the little table situated near the window and collapsed into its nearest companion chair. Sitting there with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, he dug at his scorched eye sockets with the hard-skinned heels of his palms. Sasha took a moment to detour into the bathroom to hang her jacket from the showerhead so it could drip into the tub and then sat down at the table opposite Mick, reaching out to graze the back of one of his hands with her fingertips. “How's Amy?”
He straightened up and reached for her hand. Gripping her fingers, he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “She's in ICU, but they're ‘cautiously optimistic' . . . whatever the hell that means.” He scrubbed his free hand over his face and then let it fall to the tabletop, staring through bloodshot eyes at Sasha. “I contacted her parents and they're on their way from Oklahoma City. Hopefully, by the time they arrive her condition will have been upgraded from critical to serious or maybe even stable.”
He looked so discouraged that Sasha couldn't help herself, she reached out to brush his hair off his forehead with gentle fingertips. “What a mess.”
“You got that right.”
“So, what's next? Do they have any idea who did this to her?”
“Well, I talked to a detective from the State Patrol Accident Investigation Unit. He took all her clothes to the Washington State Crime Lab in Bellevue to be checked for transfer of fibers, paint chips; that sort of thing.”
“But . . . my jacket.”
“Yeah, well, I, uh, sorta held that out.” At her look of horror, he assured her quickly, “They have enough without it. Amy was struck about thigh level. That means any fabric impressions and paint chips from the impact itself are going to be found primarily on her pants.” And that would just have to do. He'd learned how much this jacket meant to Sasha and it might be months before she ever got it back. “Unfortunately, the heavy rain may have washed away much of the trace evidence, but the cop said the crime lab does wonders finding anything there is to be found. All it takes, apparently, is one tiny paint chip and they can tell what model, make, and year of car it came from.”
“Yeah, but what good does the information do them once they've got it?” Sasha wondered. “Say they learn it's from a silver Honda Accord or a blue Buick Skylark. There must be thousands of either in Seattle alone.”
“True, but an impact like this does some damage to the car and the driver's first inclination is going to be to get it fixed. The investigators will put out a bulletin to all the auto body shops in the greater metropolitan area and its environs, and they'll also lean on all the local illegal operations they know of. Patrol cars will be alerted to be on the lookout for a silver Honda Accord or blue Buick Skylark, such and such a year, with a bashed-in grill or whatever. The smokie I talked to said their case closure rate is pretty decent.”

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