The Stranger: The Heroes of Heyday (Harlequin Superromance No. 1266) (18 page)

That surprised her. He was so unconventional himself, and he came from a long line of rebels. Besides, his mother had always volunteered at a charity for unwed mothers. Once, during Roddy's high-school years, when the “safe home” was overcrowded, the Hartland family had housed a couple of the girls. That had provided lots of great jokes about whether any house with Roddy in it could possibly be considered safe.

“I know you must be disappointed in me,” she said. “I know I have been irresponsible. But I intend to be the best mother I can possibly be. I'll—”

“God, squirt, would you please stop talking to me like I'm your obnoxious great-uncle?
Disappointed
in you? What a load of moralistic bunk.” He seemed to be working at trying to hold in his frustration. “Look. I don't have the right to be disappointed in you, and even if I
did
have the right, I wouldn't be.”

“Well, what is it, then?” She really was confused. “Why does knowing about the baby upset you more than—”

“Because—” He scratched his chest, and a dusting of sawdust sprinkled to the ground. She had his sawdust on her lips, she realized, from crying on his shoulder.

He sighed. “Look, squirt, the timing here couldn't be worse, I know that. But this helpless, abandoned,
unwed-mother thing is going to make you even more adorable than ever. If I don't speak up, some other guy is going to ride in on a white horse and rescue you, and I'll lose my chance.”

“Your chance for what?”

“To tell you that I'm crazy about you. That I love you, and I always have.”

This time she was speechless. She just stared and wondered what the punch line of this joke was going to be.

“Well? I'm pretty sure you're supposed to say something now,” he said, laughing. “Like, ‘this is so sudden,' or ‘I never knew,' or even ‘how could you, when you know my heart will always belong to the stick?'”

She ran her hand through her tangled hair, perplexed. “How about, ‘you've got to be kidding?'”

He nodded. “Okay. That's a start. Then I say, I'm
not
kidding. I really do love you. And you say—”

“I—” She shook her head helplessly. “This is so sudden. And I really never knew.”

“Very good.” He arched his brows. “And?”

She smiled. “And it's too soon, Roddy. Too soon for me to be able to think about anything like this.” She looked down at her bare left hand, feeling the twinge that she knew would soon become a torment. “I really loved him, you know.”

He grinned. “Yeah, I know. But he blew it. And eventually you'll get over him. And then it's going to be my turn.”

She had no idea what to say. Nothing on earth could have shocked her more.

But she didn't have time to think of a sensible response, because suddenly she saw Tyler Balfour running across the grass toward them.

“Mindy,” he said without preamble. “Where's Mallory?”

“I don't know,” she said, startled by the urgency in his voice and the automatic assumption that, if she knew the answer, she would be willing to tell him.

She had met him back during the Heyday Eight investigation, of course. She couldn't have missed him. He'd always been hanging around their café. But since then the two of them hadn't exchanged a single word, and she had hoped they never would. They hardly qualified as intimate friends.

Still, something in his face made her put all that aside and answer frankly.

“She was here a couple of hours ago, but then she left.” She glanced over at the stores on Hippodrome, which, she noticed for the first time, were still dark and without power. Oh, she should have called Mallory hours ago, as she'd promised she would. “Have you checked the bookstore, or the apartment?”

“I came here first, but I'm going there now.” He handed her a scrap of paper on which he'd scribbled some numbers. “If you hear from her, tell her to call me. Tell her it's important.”

And then he turned around and began loping back toward the street.

The blackmailer.

He's getting edgy,
Mallory had said. Mindy knew instinctively that something new had happened, something that disturbed even the cynical Tyler Balfour.

Mindy, whose heart was suddenly racing in her chest, looked at Roddy for about half a second. And then, without saying a word, they both began to run after him.

M
ALLORY RETURNED
to the bookstore a mere twenty minutes after she left it. And she felt only slightly better.

Both Heyday deputies were out trying to round up looters who had been seen removing jewelry and electronics from some of the unguarded homes without power in Riverside Park. There was no one in the station right now to come out and look over Mallory's damaged books.

The dispatcher who had taken her statement was very nice, and had considerately asked whether Mallory believed there was any emergency. If not, she promised to have an officer come by Mallory's store the minute one of them was free.

That would have to be good enough. In the meantime, the woman had suggested that Mallory might want to secure the evidence. If she'd left it in a building where security was compromised by broken doors, windows and so forth, Mallory might want to consider putting it somewhere safer.

For now, Tyler's new security system was inopera
tive on both floors, as it relied on electricity. But at least if Mallory kept the box of books upstairs with her, no one could take it without her knowledge.

She wasn't nervous about going into the store alone, not really. Still, she had to admit she did look first to see if Tyler's car was in the parking lot.

It wasn't.

But she refused to be childish about this. Why should she let a little darkness make her afraid of her own store? She'd left small handheld lanterns at all the entryways, so she'd be fine.

When she let herself in the side door, though, the lantern wasn't there. She knelt and felt around with both hands but encountered nothing.

Rats.
In her haste, she must have forgotten this door. There was definitely a lantern at the cash register, she was sure of that. She made her way across the room like a blind person, remembering where every piece of furniture was placed, and feeling with her hands for anything that might have been disarranged by the storm.

Her instincts started prickling, sending a weird shivering across her scalp, just about the time she heard a tiny noise. She didn't have enough time to process what kind of noise it was—small, scurrying animal? rustling paper? something more sinister?—before her hands, groping at chest level, ran into something big, something firm enough to be a piece of furniture, but shockingly warm, as if alive.

She let out a small cry, because her instincts knew
even before her conscious mind understood. It
was
alive. It was a man.

“Who—”

But she never even got the word out. A large hand came out of nowhere and clapped hard across her mouth. A rough arm wrapped her across the chest, smashing her painfully, back first, up against the man's torso.

No.
She writhed, trying to get leverage, trying to slip out of his grasp. But he was strong, and he held her so firmly that as she struggled, his arm burned and pinched her breasts, sending red flashes shooting behind her eyes.

She tried to bite his hand, but he covered her from nose to jaw, and she couldn't find an opening anywhere, not even one small enough to let through a little air.

She kicked backward, but there was no force behind it. She fought harder, stretching her arms until the sockets burned, searching for anything big enough, or sharp enough to hurt.

There was nothing. He just stood there, holding her like a disobedient kitten, enduring her scratching and kicking without even breathing hard.

She hated him, whoever he was. She hated that he had violated her store, her books, her life. She hated his big, horrible hand that choked off the air so casually, as if she had a right to breathe only if he decided to let her.

She would have killed him right now if she could.

But how much longer could it go on? What would she do if she couldn't get free?

She felt her lungs pulling desperately, her jaw straining to move, to open, to break the seal…and getting nothing.

Her head began to spin, and the red lights of pain started to flicker with a strobe effect. And then, suddenly he released her. Stumbling away from him, she knew she should scream, but first she had to feed her lungs, which were burning and heaving, as if, in that short horrible starvation, they had forgotten how breathing worked.

And then she felt the gun. Up against the small of her back. The thrust of its nose was grotesquely sexual. He pushed, then pushed harder, until she was bent over the cash register's counter, the gun still nestled in the hollow at the base of her spine.

“You shouldn't have come back, Mallory,” he said.

Shock made her whip her head around, which seemed to infuriate him. He put his meaty hand against the crown of her head and forced her face into the countertop.

But why should he be so afraid of her seeing him? She didn't need to see this man to know who he was. She'd know that voice anywhere. She'd heard it every night before she went to bed and every morning when she woke up for six long years.

It was Dan.

“What are you doing here?” She hoped he could understand her words, even though the countertop
smashed her lips strangely, and her voice sounded muffled even to her own ears.

“I'm getting something that belongs to me,” he said. “You aren't supposed to be here. You shouldn't have come home.”

She tried to swallow, but something on the desk, something hard, was cutting into her throat, and she couldn't do it.

“You're the one, aren't you?” She tried to turn her head again, but he wound his fingers into her hair and forced her face back down. “The one who's been blackmailing me.”

He laughed at that, as if it were the most ridiculous question on earth. “You made it so easy,” he said. “I knew it would be. I knew you couldn't think straight when it comes to that little bitch.”

“You mean Mindy,” she said. Of course he meant Mindy, but now that her head was clearing and she was getting over the shock of finding out who it was, she felt a little less panicked, a little more focused.

The big bad anonymous bogeyman had somehow been much more terrifying than Dan Platt could ever be. Dan was mean and petty and obviously a very dangerous man. But he was still just Dan, and she knew there had to be a way to outsmart him.

The most important thing was to buy some time. This was her store, her turf. She might be able to make something out of that. If she failed, at least the police were aware that she had asked for help. They'd show up sooner or later. So, perhaps, would Tyler.

Or Mindy…

Fear began to race through her again. Not Mindy. Of all things, she must keep Mindy away from this.

She forced herself not to think about Mindy. Right now she just needed to keep Dan talking.

“Would you really have exposed her, Dan?”

He laughed again. “Hell, yes, I would. She's a stuck-up little brat, and she needs taking down a peg. Both of you do. You always thought you were so much better than I am, didn't you? What a joke. A frigid bitch and a dirty whore.”

“We didn't think that we—”

The gun pushed so hard into her that she felt the rim of its nose scrape her spine. She arced her back, trying to escape the pain.

“Yes, you did,” he said harshly. “You married me, God only knows why you did that, and then you froze me out. You refused to touch me for six months. And then how shocked and disgusted you were when I found some warmth somewhere else.”

You didn't find it,
she thought.
You bought it.

But she didn't say it out loud. She could only imagine how strung out he was already, how tense that finger was upon the trigger. She had to find a way to keep him from pulling it.

“But you've found another girl now, Dan. Jeannie is warm. Jeannie loves you.”

“That's right,” he said. “And you're going to try to spoil that, too.”

“No,” she said. “No, why would I do that?”

He twisted his hand in her hair viciously, pulling at the roots so hard it brought stinging tears to her eyes. “I saw you tonight. I saw you go to the police station. You are going to give them the books, aren't you? The books I left you as a little present.”

“No,” she said. “The books are still here. You can take them.”

“Bullshit. You just want me to take this gun out of your back. You'd never give me all of them. You'd always keep one, to put me in jail with. You've seen my new wife. Do you really think she'd still be sitting around waiting for me when I got out?”

She didn't answer. She couldn't focus on him right now. She had finally thought of a plan, and now she just needed the courage to carry it out.

There was a very large, very sharp pair of scissors in the left-hand drawer of this counter. She kept them there to cut open cartons of books as they arrived. Wally sometimes took them out and pretended to clean his nails with them, amused that they were so huge.

She was pretty sure she could reach them, as long as he kept her stretched out like this across the counter. But she also knew he'd hear the sound of the drawer opening, and, if he realized what she was up to, he could reach out and slam it shut on her fingers before she had the chance do anything.

Or else he'd take the easy route and shoot her.

So she had to create a diversion. She had to pretend to panic, make some noise, flail about wildly. Anything
to keep him from suspecting that her movements were deliberate, that she was reaching for those scissors.

It was going to hurt dreadfully. Already her breasts, with the edge of the counter cutting into them, were on fire with pain. Her nose throbbed from slamming into the counter. The instinct was to stay as still as possible, to keep from making the torment worse.

But she had to fight that instinct. And she had to do it quickly, before he decided to move her to another spot.

“Dan,” she said, “please let me go. I can't breathe. I can't breathe.”

She began to wriggle. She twisted, ignoring the red-hot pincers of pain that shot through her chest and shoulders and spine. She felt the warmth of seeping blood where her breasts were scraped raw.

But she couldn't let herself stop. She made choking sounds and began to move her arms in terrified, jerking motions.

He laughed. “Too bad you didn't have this much fire in you when we were married.” He stepped closer and ground his pelvis against her a couple of times obscenely, unaware or uncaring that she was nearly torn in two with pain. “I might not have needed to go out looking for love in all the wrong places.”

The bastard. She thought of the years she had let him make love to her. She thought of him standing over her books, soiling them. She was afraid she might be sick, which would be disastrous, with her face pressed painfully against the counter.

So she took her horror, her revulsion and her fear, and she used it to push away all awareness of pain. She jerked and twisted.

“Let me go, let me go, let me go.” She went slightly mad, and finally he was panting, too, just trying to hold her still.

“You're going to get it now, you hellcat.” He released her hair to free a hand so that he could unzip his pants. “It's time somebody taught you a lesson.”

But finally her hands had touched the cold metal of the scissors. She couldn't find the holes, so she grabbed them around the shaft.

And then she reached back and drove them into his leg.

He screamed, backing away. She heard the gun fall to the floor.

She didn't wait to see how much damage she'd done. She began to run. But he was running, too. Then there was a gunshot. He had found the gun again, even in the dark. He had found it. And now he was going to kill her.

She almost made it to the front door. But then she tripped on a battery-operated fan someone had left there to help dry out the carpet. She banged her head on the CD display case as she went down. She felt her limbs go limp.

She heard him coming behind her, but she didn't seem to be able to do anything to get away.

And then, miraculously, the front door burst open. She saw a confusion of torchlights, and a lot of bodies, lots of men and noise. Was it the police?

Or had Tyler finally come home? If she was going to die here, there was something she'd like to tell him.

More gunshots rang out. A man yelled in pain. More people called out, more jiggling, crazed torch beams.

One of the beams caught her in its glare. And then Mindy was suddenly there, kneeling beside her.

“Mallory,” Mindy cried. “Mallory, are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” she said, or at least she hoped she said that. Her throat felt bruised, and her mind was a little fuzzy. She started to mention that her chest was bleeding, and something warm was running down her temple, but that didn't seem to matter right now. It was so good to feel Mindy's arms around her.

“Sit still, you son of a bitch,” a voice in the darkness said irritably, “or we'll shoot you again.”

Mallory raised up on one elbow. That was Tyler's voice. “Tyler?” Her voice sounded raspy and unfamiliar. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” he said. “I'm here. I brought some friends, just in case you needed help.”

“You brought the police?”

“Not exactly,” another voice said. She knew that voice, too. It was Bryce McClintock. “All he could find was a little band of brothers, but apparently that was enough to do the trick. Dan here—it is that asshole Dan, isn't it? He's not going to be bothering you anymore.”

Suddenly, there was a crackle, a flicker, and then a
flood of lights. The power company, working around the clock as they had promised, had finally prevailed.

Mallory blinked, squinting, unable to bear the sudden illumination. She ducked her head into Mindy's lap and, as she did, it occurred to her that this was the first time she had ever turned to her little sister for help. It had always been the other way around.

Mindy stroked her head gently. It was, surprisingly, one of the most comforting feelings in the world.