On Thin Ice (29 page)

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Authors: Susan Andersen

BOOK: On Thin Ice
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“I'm sorry,” she said primly, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her shins. “There's no excuse I can give for such violent behavior—”
“Oh, for Christ's sake, Sasha,” he interrupted impatiently, “the real surprise here is that you haven't cracked before now.” He rolled to his side, propping himself up on one elbow and staring at her intently. “I wish you'd just vent it all, until every last bit of it is out in the open—then maybe we'd have a chance to move on.”
“Yeah, well. Don't hold your breath.”
“No, I've learned not to do that.” He studied her features one by one. “Can you at least tell me what precipitated this little brouhaha?”
“What else? If it wasn't you, then by process of elimination that naturally leaves—”
“Morrison.”
“Yeah, Lonnie. Don't ask me for specifics, though, because I simply cannot talk of him to you . . . or of you to him, for that matter.”
“And that's the biggest shame of all, isn't it?” He jammed his fingers through his hair. “One of the things I loved best about living with you was the way you and I could always talk about anything under the sun. I don't think there's another person on earth I've experienced that with.”
“Yeah, well,” she said bitterly, “the search will just have to continue, I guess, because it's not likely you'll ever experience it with me again. I tend to lose my ability to express myself freely when I discover that everything I believed to be true was actually a lie.”
Mick observed her stiff posture and wary eyes, remembered how different she had been just seven short days ago, and shook his head for what he'd helped to destroy. “Morrison and me . . . we're making your life a misery, aren't we?”
She quit avoiding his eyes for the first time since he'd lifted himself up off of her and raised her chin, meeting them squarely as she said in a low voice, “About as miserable as it can possibly be.”
“For what it's worth, darlin', I'm truly sorry. I know it probably doesn't help a damn thing, but I am sorry.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly and pushed herself to her feet. She looked down at him, wanting desperately to believe in the sincerity she saw in his eyes. Then she shrugged the desire aside. She had learned the hard way that wanting something like that wasn't a smart thing to do.
“That's nice of you to say,” she said in a cool little voice, “but is it truth or is Memorex?” She shrugged impatiently. “And even if it's true, you're right, you know. It really doesn't help a damn thing.”
E
IGHTEEN
Lon kept one ear attuned to Karen in the shower as he rapidly riffled her dresser drawers. He felt like a perfect fool and did
not
expect to find anything worth getting excited over.
And yet . . .
The truth was he hadn't liked the look in her eyes last night when she'd tracked him to the bar. She had to have passed Sasha; there was no way in hell she could have missed her storming out. However, not only had she failed to cross-examine him in her usual inimitable Perry Mason style, Sasha's name hadn't even so much as crossed her lips. That was very un-Karen-like, so much so that it caused those short hairs at the back of his neck to stand on end.
He had yet to figure out how the hell she had known to come looking for him in the lounge in the first place—bars weren't exactly Karen's usual milieu. Did she possess some damn sixth sense or something that sent forth a signal every time he and Saush got together? Life with this woman was turning out to be too fucking weird for words.
His hands slid deftly between slippery layers of underwear and he pushed the drawer closed just as he heard the shower being turned off. Crossing over to the bed, he gave it an assessing look, remembering his favorite place to hide his stash of skin magazines from his mother's eyes back in his teenaged days in straight-laced Kells Crossing. Keeping a sharp look out on the short hall that led to the bathroom, he flipped up the comforter and slid his arm between the mattress and boxspring until it was buried up to the armpit. Mouth twisted in distaste, thinking a cynical,
God, this is asinine,
he made a wide sweep, starting at the head of the mattress and working his way toward the foot.
He was midway down when his fingers encountered the unmistakable shape of a handgun.
 
 
Connie checked to make sure no daylight would find a chink through the tightly closed draperies, then passed Sasha the cold pack she'd rigged up with ice from the machine downstairs and a washcloth from the bathroom. She settled herself in the chair opposite her friend. “So what's your next move going to be?”
The derisive sound that issued through Sasha's nose on an exhaled huff of breath was nonverbal but nonetheless expressive. “Besides swearing off drinking for the rest of my life, you mean? God, I wish I knew.” She applied the ice pack gingerly to her right temple. “You think there's a snowball's chance in hell of this thing wearing off before tonight's show?”
“Oh, it should; we've got a lot of hours yet. And if it doesn't,” she continued with a cheerfulness that Sasha considered callously indifferent to the pain she was suffering, “you'll get through it somehow. I've never heard of a hangover yet that was terminal.”
“They just feel that way, I guess.” Sasha blew out a disgusted breath. “I feel like such an idiot. I didn't even realize I'd had so much to drink until I went ballistic on him.” She transferred the cold pack to her left temple and gazed unhappily at Connie. “Lord, more than anything I wish there was something I could do to find a solution to this predicament myself. I hate sitting around like a good little victim while Mick hunts for the person responsible for landing me in this mess.”
“But what can you do, Saush?” Connie regarded her with alarm, not in the least thrilled at the idea of her best friend plunging blindly into a situation for which she patently had not the slightest preparation.
“Yeah, that's the problem, isn't it; what can I accomplish on my own? It's not as if I'm qualified to do a damn thing except skate.” Shifting the ice pack to the top of her head, she clamped it there with the fingers of both hands and planted her elbows on the table, squeezing her temples between her forearms. Silent for several moments, she finally raised her chin, peering through slitted eyelids at her friend across the table. “I'm fairly intelligent, I think, but I don't have the foggiest idea how one goes about detecting a drug dealer with a penchant for violence.”
“So leave it up to Vinicor.”
Sasha did not take kindly to her friend's advice. Her head was pounding, her stomach felt on the edge of revolt, her life seemed increasingly beyond her control, and the sensation of helplessness did not contribute to the sweetness of her nature. “I can't just sit here and do nothing, Connie,” she snapped testily. “I mean, there must be
something
I can undertake on my own behalf. I don't wanna be saved by some man.”
“It's not some man you object to, Saush; it's Mick.”
Sasha's mouth developed a mulish slant. “Okay. Fine. I don't want to be saved by Mick.” She was furious with Connie, with herself, with the world in general. None of which was a legitimate excuse for the snotty tone she used to inquire, “Is that better? You happy now?”
“Don't you take your hangover out on me, Miller.” Connie shoved back from the table and stood up. She saw the stubborn expression on Sasha's face and rolled her eyes. “Listen, I know you feel wronged by Mick, and, yeah, okay, you've got a perfect right to your feelings,” she said quietly. “You've had a lot of cruddy things piled onto your shoulders lately. But the bottom line here is that he knows what he's doing when it comes to this drug stuff and you don't. So stay the heck out of that part of it.”
Sasha tried indignantly to interrupt. “He—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Connie rode right over her. “He screwed up in a major way. He's a pig; he's a dog—I've heard it ad nauseam. But you know what, Sasha? I believe he genuinely loves you. And I
know
he'd do damn near anything to ensure your safety. Now you can hang on to your hurt and refuse everything he has to offer, including his professional expertise.” She paused to drill her friend with a hard look. “Or you might want to try growing up.”
Feeling misused and maligned, Sasha assured herself it was merely pain induced by the door slamming behind Connie that caused her to squeeze her eyes shut against the scalding rise of tears.
 
 
“Shit!” Mick crumpled the fact sheet into a ball and hurled it across the room. Digging the heels of his hands into his scorched eye sockets, he strung together the foulest combination of obscenities his fertile vocabulary could conjure. Damn it anyhow; he'd really liked the idea of Jack-the-bus-driver as Morrison's elusive partner. But was life about to cooperate by being that simple? Hell no. The latest missive from the home office listed several dates and facts that made Jack as his man an improbability at best.
He was right back at ground zero.
Well, screw individual liberties then; he was requesting more equipment. The time had come to saturate. There were nine more names on the list of candidates and he was tired of doing them one at a time. He would pick out the likeliest and tap the person's room with the gear he had on hand as soon as they arrived in Denver. In the meantime he'd make noise the likes of which the suits had never heard until they sent him more electronics. Then he was bugging every damn name on the list, no matter how unlikely.
He used to have a reputation as the best street hump in the business. It was time he stopped acting like a lovesick amateur and started earning it once again.
 
 
Leaving the gun where he found it, Lon tucked the dislodged bedding back into place, twitched the comforter straight, and backed away until his calves bumped into a chair, whereupon the lower body muscle power keeping him upright abruptly dissipated. He sat down hard and, elbows digging into his knees, he buried his face in his hands. Jesus. Ah God, Jesus. What was he going to do?
An image of Vinicor taking command at the DiGornio home the night Amy Nitkey was struck by the car—
Ah
,
Christ, Karen, was that your doing too?
—flashed into his mind, and for a moment he was tempted to take this whole sorry mess and lay it out in front of the guy. Surely they could put aside their personal differences long enough to . . .
Nice dream you dumb shit. But this is real life
. Lonnie's bark of bitter laughter was muffled by his hands. Hell, who was he trying to kid? Like Vinicor would ever believe a word that Morrison-the-Convicted-Drug-Dealer had to say about Karen Corselli.
The Saint.
Ah, man, he was screwed. No matter which way you looked at it, his back was to the wall. And he'd thought he was so clever. Oh, yeah; he had just known he was smarter for sure than your average guy on the street—the rules, after all, didn't
apply
to him.
Well, he wasn't so friggin' smart. No, he really wasn't very smart at all.
What he most likely was, in fact . . . was a dead man.
 
 
Sasha let herself into their room. Her stomach felt much better but she still had to hold her head with extreme care and to avoid at all costs making any sudden unwarranted movements.
Mick was growling and swearing into the phone, and she went to the closet to pull her suitcase off the shelf. The bus was leaving Cheyenne for Denver in about an hour and a half and she still had to pack. Going into the bathroom, she shook out three aspirin, swallowed them with a glass of water, and began to gather up her toiletries.
She heard Mick hang up the phone in the other room and her hands went still, her face lifted to gaze at her reflection in the mirror. She'd given some reluctant thought to what Connie had said. And maybe, just maybe, she had a point insofar as taking advantage of Mick's professional expertise went.
But the idea of applying to him in any way, shape, or form was abhorrent to her.
Taking a deep breath, tidying her flyaway curls as best she could, she assured herself that she would nevertheless do just that. No one was going to have an excuse to tell her again that she needed to grow up.
Carrying her toiletry bag, her diffuser blow dryer, and a nightgown she'd discovered hanging on the back of the bathroom door, she walked out into the hotel room. Efficiently packing them into the open suitcase on her bed, she then turned to the nearest dresser, pulled open a drawer, and reached inside for the stack of clothing inside.
Mick lounged in a chair by the window watching her, his hands laced over his flat stomach, long legs extended in front of him and crossed at the ankle, one size thirteen shoe wagging slowly from side to side. “How's your head?” he inquired.
He could tell by the way she swiveled her entire upper body in his direction, instead of merely turning her head to look at him, that it was far from all right, but when she not-too-surprisingly said, “Fine,” he shrugged and let it go at that. He had a brand new agenda, which was to accomplish what was accomplishable, not to head-bang with cement walls.
To reinforce his decision, he pushed to his feet and went to get his own suitcase. Tossing it on his bed, he worked the hidden locks and flipped open, not the suitcase portion, but the false bottom. He felt rather than saw Sasha stiffen.
“I've been an agent since I graduated college,” he said in a quiet voice as he ran an unnecessary check over his equipment. He looked up at her, standing erect and white-faced next to her bed, and wondered if the day would ever come when the wanting would stop. “I genuflect to your honesty,” he said hoarsely. “But, baby, trying to emulate it in this business would have bought me a pine box six feet under years ago. A DEA street hump either lies . . . or he dies.” He shrugged.
“You don't want to believe me when I tell you that once the words ‘I love you' were said I gave up fabricating stories for you. So I'm not gonna bother you with my assurances any more. From now on I'm going back to doing strictly what I do best.” His face was closed and stern as he watched her across the small distance that separated them. “I'll get you out of this mess,” he said with complete authority. “And then I'll get the hell out of your life. You have my word on it.”
It was what she'd wanted ever since she'd learned who he really was. She nodded coolly in acknowledgment and went with quiet dignity around the room gathering up the rest of her personal items. She set aside a clean set of clothes and efficiently packed the rest. She dug out her diffuser dryer and makeup case once again.
Then she went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, slid down the wall, and sobbed beneath its pounding, concealing spray until the water ran cold and her tear ducts finally ran dry.

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