The Heart Heist (6 page)

Kerrin waved a hand in the air. "Whatever."

"You want my word?"

"That's right."

He gave her an odd look. "Hasn't anyone told you, lady, that my word isn't worth squat?"

Kerrin blinked, absolutely dumbstruck by such a statement of brutal self-criticism -- and from a man she hadn't thought owned any personal integrity. "No, nobody told me that." She cleared the astonishment from her throat. "So if you don't mind, I'd just as soon have your word. I'll decide myself whether or not it has any value."

She kept her gaze firmly fixed on his face. He stared back, and not with gentle kindness. No, he looked more like he wouldn't mind if she up and melted into the heat-softened asphalt of the parking lot.

"I don't get it. What do you want me to say?"

Kerrin was getting a definite impression of evasion here. That evasion let her imagine, for the first time, that Sullivan might not turn out to be as much of a menace as she'd feared. Would a man who meant to create havoc scruple to lie about his plans?

"I want you to tell me your intentions." Kerrin noted a hint of moisture high up on his forehead. Was her question making him nervous?

"All right." He heaved a sigh. "I don't
intend
to rip off anybody in your miserable little town.
Now
, are you satisfied?"

His stress of intent rather than result did not escape her notice, but Kerrin nodded. "Yes, I'm satisfied. You see, Mr. Sullivan, your word means a great deal more to me than any fancy deals you've worked out with the prison authorities."

His expression was bemused. "You," he pronounced, "are one dizzy dame."

Kerrin lifted a shoulder. It was not the first time she'd been handed the title. "Good day, Mr. Sullivan." Saying which, and with a lofty lift of her chin, Kerrin turned to go.

"Not so fast, sweetheart."

Her progress was halted by the strap of her purse, which Gary Sullivan had grasped in one lazy fist. She turned, eyes wide, and alarmed all over again.

The perspiration was now trickling down his sideburns but he didn't seem to particularly notice as he suddenly grinned at her. Kerrin's breath caught at the excellent physical confidence of the man. He didn't care that he was sweating; as far as Gary Sullivan was concerned, sweat was just another natural, perfectly acceptable part of his whole sensual body.

Kerrin experienced then an emotion she never dreamed she would with respect to this man: envy.

"You and me, we've got things to work out." Sullivan's grin faded as he let go of her purse strap.

"We -- we do? Such as -- what?"

"Such as -- you're the only person in town's going to know who I really am." Sullivan scowled. "That's a problem."

"A problem? Marty seemed to think it a necessity."

"Oh, Marty." Sullivan gave an airy wave. "He has the ridiculous notion you're going to be able to keep an eye on me. As if you'd be able to do anything but gape with those eyes of yours, after the fact. No," Sullivan decided wearily. "You're a problem." Suddenly he brightened. "Say, maybe you should give me
your
word."

"My word?"

"Right. That you aren't going to botch things up for me."

Kerrin could only admit this was fair. She nodded. "Very well. You have my word. I won't interfere -- in your legitimate work."

"That means that when I hit town, you don't know me from Adam. Got it?"

It occurred to Kerrin that Gary was setting up a situation where it would be very difficult for her to keep tabs on him. "I -- well, I -- Got it," Kerrin decided, withering under a forceful glare from the man. "Umm. How
are
you going to explain yourself?"

"I haven't decided yet." Gary gave the impression that even if he had, she'd be the last to know. "But whatever it is, you're just as much in the dark as everybody else. Right?"

"Right." What else was she going to say?

"Now," Gary told her, in much the same severe tone. "The sun is going down and you have a long drive home. Where's your car?"

"My car?" This sudden change in topic baffled Kerrin. "It's -- over here." She pointed to the little Toyota as she began moving in that direction.

Gary followed close behind. "Oh no," he said.

Kerrin, searching for her car keys in her purse, looked up. "What's the matter?"

The expression on the thief's face could only be described as outraged. "You're not driving home in that car."

Considering that Kerrin couldn't locate her car keys, this fact was too possibly true. But Kerrin ignored that detail for the moment. "That's my car. Of course I'm driving home in it."

His eyes darkened. "It's seventy-five miles to Freedom. Seventy-five very empty miles. And you plan to drive them in this junk heap, alone?"

"This is not a junk heap." Kerrin gave her car a defensive pat on the hood. "'96 was a very reliable year for Toyotas."

"Right." Gary closed his eyes. "And I'm a prime candidate for governor." Opening his eyes again, he trained them demandingly on her face. "And what do you do if this wonderfully reliable car plays out of character and breaks down? You couldn't possibly get cell reception out there."

"My car isn't going to break down -- " Kerrin halted, remembering Ollie's warning she ought to have her hoses replaced. She'd put it off until the fall semester started with her regular salary. "I mean, it got me here, didn't it?" she claimed. Meanwhile she made one more -- she hoped unobtrusive -- search of her purse with a blind hand. Where were those keys? "And besides, even if it did break down I could do like everybody else and walk to one of those call phones. The Auto Club is pretty fast about picking you up. Damn!"

Giving up all pretense, she gave her purse a vigorous shake. It was not unlike her to misplace a set of keys, even in as small a circle as comprised the parking lot and motel room. She just wished she hadn't had to act so dim-witted today, in front of this man.

"You looking for these?" Gary held out her car keys.

"How did you -- ? Never mind, I don't want to know." She reached for the keys but Gary moved them aside.

"You absolutely insist on driving this car back to Freedom?"

"I absolutely do."

"Then there's a condition to getting the keys back."

Kerrin sighed. "Now what?"

He dangled the keys, considering. "When you get home I want you to call back here to let us know you arrived safely."

Kerrin stopped breathing and stared. He sounded like...a mother hen! Once she recovered her voice, she thought to remind him, "I thought I wasn't supposed to know you from Adam."

With a scowl, he gave her the keys. "Just call."

He was still standing there looking after her as she pulled her car out of the parking lot. She could see him in her rear view mirror, his brows drawn in concern as he watched her disappear down the street.

That look of concern disturbed Kerrin during the hour drive home more than all of the threats, veiled and otherwise, that Gary Sullivan had ever made.

~~~

She was going to drive home in that sad little excuse for a car anyway, Gary saw, watching her pull out of the motel parking lot. Lord, he'd forgotten how hair-pulling stubborn women could be. The trait was almost enough to convince a man he was better off without them.

Almost. But no, Gary couldn't forget that moment of awareness in Kerrin Horton's eyes when they'd met his in the mirror of the motel room. For one brief, fleeting moment she'd looked at him as a woman would look at a man. It had been the first such moment Gary had known in over five years. Only because it was the first, it had sent his blood racing like a thoroughbred. He had more sense than to set his sights on Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. And she had more sense than to repeat what had undoubtedly been a freak accident. No, she wouldn't do it again.

Turning from the empty road, Gary took the stairs two at a time, working out a thoroughly inappropriate frustration. It didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out he terrified her. Fortunately she wasn't too scared of him to stand up to him. Gary was oddly glad of that.

He came to a dead halt on the threshold of the room. Marty was no longer alone. That man was with him. Where the hell had he sprung from?

Crazy Willie, for what it was worth, hadn't liked the man either. He'd even gone so far as to beg Gary not to take the job, sensing something stank even without the benefit of knowing all the details. Gary had made his own decision, but Willie's concern for his welfare had been touching. Willie, Gary figured, must be the only being on the planet who cared what happened to him.

"Close the door," the man said. In a pinstriped suit that accented his close-cropped white hair, he lounged in one of the chairs at the table, carefully out of the line of sight of said door. His face betrayed no emotion, even annoyance.

Gary closed the door, wondering if it were this lack of emotional signalling that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. The man had been trained not to show any, he supposed.

"Where'd you come from, Rogers?" Gary asked.

"I have the room next door." Rogers gestured toward the open connecting door.

His sudden appearance was not such a fancy trick, then.

"So, what do you want?" Gary forced himself to take the second chair, though Marty kept his distance from the federal agent. Gary knew it was a mistake to show a bully you were scared.

The fed picked up Gary's packet of cigarettes and shook one out. "The woman is going to be a problem."

A chill crept up Gary's back. "I can handle her." Probably untrue, but Gary didn't want the spook thinking he ought to try the job.

Rogers nodded. "Yeah, I saw that, in the parking lot. Be careful, Sullivan, she's smart as a whip." The agent regarded one of Gary's cigarettes between the tips of his fingers. "Best thing to do is get her into bed. Clever female like that -- it's the only way to control her."

Gary felt something heavy press down inside his chest. "I hired on as a security consultant, not a Lothario."

The federal agent lifted his eyes over the cigarette to regard Gary. "It wouldn't be hard, you know."

"She's a nice girl." Wasn't that obvious?

"Of course. And nice girls like bad boys."

Gary sneered. "Well, you oughta know." But inside he felt suddenly sick. Was that all the moment in the mirror had been: Kerrin's fascination with a bad boy, a thrilling taste of forbidden fruit? Whatever secret gratification Gary had been harboring over the moment slipped away.

The special agent carefully replaced the cigarette in the pack, rolling it so that it was in the exact position from which he'd removed it. He put the pack down on the table in the precise location from which he'd lifted it. More training, Gary supposed.

Slowly Rogers rose to his feet, allowing no reaction to the anger he must have sensed emanating from Gary. "Mark my words, one way or another that woman is going to be a problem. In fact," he continued, seeming just to remember something, "she already is."

He fixed Gary with a cold gaze. "Tell me, Sullivan, how did she know about you? How did she find out the DWP was planning to hire you? Think about that, why don't you, when you wonder who else might know about your mission -- the real one." He paused to give Gary a slight smile. "If I were in your shoes I'd do whatever I had to in order to discover some answers before Columbus Day."

At the threshold of the connecting door, he halted to turn back to Gary with one eyebrow raised. "It could mean your life."

CHAPTER FOUR

Matt waited impatiently while his father twisted two copper wires together with a pair of pliers.

Tom Horton squinted at the connection he was forming, his forehead creased in concentration. "There, that ought to take care of it."

Tom was a large man who filled the outdoor work shed with his height. He was surrounded by electronics tools, pieces of wire, cables, resistors, and clean sheets of copper. Everything was neat and in its place, properly labeled.

"You want to take that up to number three-A?" Tom asked, holding the connected wires toward Matt. He turned to check a laminated map that hung on the wall. "Yes," he hummed contentedly. "Three-A."

"Sure, Dad." Matt knew better than to try getting his father's attention at this point in the game. Tom was way deep in his experiment. "You want me to connect it to the positive or the negative node?"

"Negative, negative," Tom hummed as he bent to fiddle with one of the readout monitors.

Setting the wire end and a pair of pliers in his lap, Matt wheeled out of the shed and pumped his way up the hill. They'd put down wood tracks so his tires rolled smoothly as he made his way into the array of copper sheets. The sheets were each about two feet by four and they quivered in the small evening breeze. From outer space, Matt figured, the array would look like a blooming flower.

He found the copper sheet in the third concentric circle out from the center. Taking the pliers, he fastened the wire to the negative node.

A guy could have worse parents, Matt figured. True, they were crazy as loons, but they were nice. They hadn't even gotten angry about his accident three years ago, although it had been his own fault.

Finished with his task, Matt dropped the pliers back in his lap, turned the chair, and coasted back down the hill with his hands loosely over the wheels, braking just enough to keep control. The copper sheets glittered in the moonlight as he sped by. Not for the first time, Matt thought how hot it would be if his parents actually did receive a message from outer space. That would put the laugh on everyone. It would be the living end.

When Matt got back to the work shed, Tom was seated at a crude wooden desk, poring over an electronic diagram. He looked up when Matt came through the door.

"You wanted to talk to me about something?"

See, that was the thing with them. One minute you were thinking they were completely out to lunch and deep in space, and the next minute they were right on you like they'd been paying attention the whole time.

Matt rolled closer to the table. "We need to do something about Kerrin."