To Trust a Stranger (4 page)

“Look, I've got a problem, okay? I don't want my husband to find out I was out tonight,” she confessed, her shoulders slumping in defeat as she lowered the phone. Debbie knew who she was and therefore almost certainly knew Sid in some way or another, although her mind boggled at picturing mucho macho Sid having an acquaintance with a drag queen. But Debbie was such a bizarre figure that it seemed all right to confide, a little, in him. He would have his share of secrets, too. Besides, she'd wrecked his car, he wanted to call the police, and she was just now fully beginning to comprehend what a really bad idea that was. She was willing to bet good money that every cop in
South Carolina
knew or knew of her husband, and once she called them she might just as well take out an ad in the paper describing the night's debacle and be done with. If telling Debbie a little of the truth would win her enough sympathy to give her time to think, Julie was all for that. “Oh, yeah?” Debbie sounded interested rather than sympathetic, but interested worked too. More people were coming into the parking lot now, and a candy-red Corvette drove past them on the way to the exit. It honked, and a manicured hand tipped in long, bright red nails waved gaily out the driver's window. Lana and Clint.

“If you know who I am, then you must know I'm good for the damages to your car,” Julie said. “But I really don't want to call the police.”

“Is that right?” Debbie was looking at her speculatively. “Suppose we get in my car where we can have a little bit of privacy and you tell me all about it. Maybe I can help you out here.” Debbie's very masculine-feeling hand curled around her upper arm again before Julie could answer, urging her toward his damaged vehicle. Julie glanced up, registered once again the mind-boggling dichotomy of platinum curls bouncing against breasts roughly the size of the Himalayas on a linebacker's broad-shouldered frame, then allowed herself to be persuaded. Turning to a flamboyant, gender- bending stranger for help was probably only a little less stupid than chasing after Sid in the first place, but under the circumstances none of the other options she could think of were any more appealing. Debbie opened the Blazer door for her, and Julie slid into the black leather seat. It was only as he shut the door behind her and walked around the hood to get in himself that it occurred to her that maybe getting into a car with a strange man in women's clothes might not be the smartest thing she had ever done.

3

JULIE CARLSON WAS EVERY BIT AS HOT as Mac remembered. Great tits, great ass, great legs, skin the color of honey, long, tousled black hair that would look fantastic spread out over a man's pillow, kissable lips, big brown eyes. He'd first seen her at her wedding. At the time he'd been a cop, hired for the occasion to provide security, and while he'd been full of admiration for the sexy young bride he'd been busy thinking about other things, and she had never so much as glanced his way. Her eyes had been all for her groom: John Sidney Carlson IV; born with a silver spoon in his mouth that Mac had never stopped wanting to cram up his ass instead. Back then Sid made a splash with everything he did, and his wedding-his second wedding-was no exception. There'd been a thousand guests, including the governor and more big names than you could shake a stick at, TV and newspaper coverage, and Julie Ann Williams, one month out of her reign as Miss South Carolina, for a bride. That was eight years ago. A lot of water had gone under the bridge since then, including his own firing from the Charleston PD, which Sid, the corrupt bastard, had almost certainly orchestrated. But that was just a tiny part of his beef with Sid. The major part, the part that Mac could never forget, concerned his brother. Daniel, who had been eight years his senior, had vanished some fifteen years before. And Mac had grown increasingly convinced that Sid, Daniel's friend from childhood, at the very least knew what had happened to him. At first, they-his mother, his grandmother, and himself, Daniel's family-thought Daniel had simply taken off somewhere. He'd been twenty-five years old at the time, after all, and a free spirit if there ever was one. Then, when months passed without a word, they began to wonder if perhaps he'd gotten in some kind of a jam and was lying low. As months turned into years, they had entertained theories ranging from a foreign prison to amnesia. Mac's mother had died ten years ago, still uncertain about her older son's fate and grieving at his absence. Mac had promised her on her deathbed that he would find his brother. So far he hadn't been able to make good on that promise. The last time he had talked to Daniel had been during a hurried telephone call. His brother had begged out of a basketball game he'd promised to take then seventeen-year-old Mac to because of a job he had to do for Richie. Richie-as in Richie Rich-was their private nickname for Sid, because Sid lived a life that seemed dazzlingly opulent to two working-class sons of a dead-in-the-line-of-duty cop. Something in Daniel's tone had made Mac think that whatever the “job” was, it was not the nine-to-five variety, but Mac hadn't asked and Daniel hadn't been any more specific than that. Once he'd become a cop himself, Mac had, quietly and on his own time, started searching for his brother, and checking Sid out had been right there at the top of his to-do list. He hadn't really expected to find much on Richie Rich, but what he'd turned up had surprised him. Sid's first wife, for example, had walked out on their marriage at about the same time that Daniel had disappeared. Interestingly enough, she couldn't be found. And word on the street was that Sid was involved in the drug trade. Given Daniel's apparently comfortable finances, his lack of a steady job after leaving the military, and his renewed involvement with childhood friend Sid, Mac had come to suspect that Daniel's “job” for Sid and his subsequent disappearance could both be linked to a drug operation Sid was running. But he couldn't prove it. Nobody in authority seemed at all interested in taking up the investigation. The Carlsons were VIPs in
South Carolina
, after all, with friends in high places, and nobody wanted to call the wrath of the powers that be down upon his own head. The consensus had been shut up, get over your brother, and find something else to do. It didn't help that Daniel had spent years flirting with the wrong side of the law. It also didn't help that the ex-wife was from
California
, that home of all things degenerate, where she'd presumably returned before dropping out of sight. In the end, as was none too gently pointed out to him, all he had on Sid was basically gossip. When he'd persevered, trying to get proof of illegal activity, he'd ended up getting his ass kicked off the force. Now, through the kind of twist of fate that Mac had almost quit believing in, he was being given a second chance to get at some answers: Sid's beauty-queen bride was sitting in his car with him, looking sexy as hell in an itty-bitty pink satin getup that played up all her best points, in a jam and scared of her husband and turning to him for help. Suddenly the gods were smiling on him. He fished his cell phone out of his cleavage-it was lodged in there right along with the wad of athletic socks that served as his right tit, while his Glock nestled securely under the wad on the left-punched a button, and started the car, all at approximately the same time. The AC blasted out hot air. He turned it down and rolled down the windows until the interior could reach a decent temperature. Street sounds formed a steady background noise not unlike the buzz of a giant insect.

“Uh, wait a minute.” Julie Carlson sounded uneasy. The look she sent him was wary. God, she was a pretty thing. Sid had always been about a million times luckier than he deserved, and his wife was no exception. “Sit tight,” he said to her with a quick, meant-to-be-reassuring smile that he had no idea struck its recipient as downright scary, framed as it was in scarlet lipstick and platinum curls. He put the Blazer in reverse before she could say anything else and then spoke into the phone as Hinkle answered. “
Yo
. Change of plan. Get over to
85 Dumesnil Street
and get some pictures. Edwards is having a party and I want an album.”

“Me?” Hinkle squawked, his disembodied voice making his displeasure clear. “What about you? You seemed to be getting along with him real good. You turnin' tail now that the going's getting tough, you chicken shit?”

“Somebody hit my car, and I've got to sort it out. It's going to take a while. Get those pictures.” He drove toward the exit. Now that they were moving, there was a breeze, which made the temperature inside the car almost bearable. Beside him, his passenger was looking more uneasy than ever. Mac smiled at her again. Sid's wife falling into his lap like this was the most promising thing that had happened to him in a long time, and he meant to make the most of it.

“Edwards doesn't know me from crap,” Hinkle said. “How'm I supposed to get in?”

“Take a pizza. Pretend you're delivering. Hell, just walk in. Nobody'll notice. Edwards is drunk off his ass, and apparently there's going to be quite a crowd.” There was a break in the traffic. Mac pulled out behind a big white Caddy and headed south. If the thieves were pros-and they almost certainly were-the Jaguar was long gone. But it was always possible she'd been robbed by a couple of kids out for a joyride, in which case the car might have been abandoned somewhere nearby. “I don't think this is such a good idea,” Julie Carlson said. “Would you take me back to the parking lot, please?” Mac caught her eye, held up one finger-wait a minute--and gave her another of those reassuring smiles. He watched her glance down at the cell phone in her hand and hesitate, and then he tracked her other hand as it crept up the door toward the handle. Was she thinking about jumping out? Not unless she had a death wish. The street was jammed with cars, and at this time of night it was a good bet that most of the drivers were feeling no pain. If he'd still been a cop, he could have done a month's worth of busts right here, knocking on windows and hauling the over-the-limit ones in.

“Yeah, like nobody's gonna notice a straight black man taking pictures at a gay white guy's orgy. I'm gonna get my ass kicked.” Hinkle's gloomy-sounding voice spoke in his ear. “Shit. This always happens. Every damned time.”

“Got to go,” Mac said as he stopped at a traffic light, saw Julie Carlson's fingers curl around the door handle, and broke the connection. “What was that all about?” She was looking at him apprehensively. “I was supposed to take some pictures at a party, and now, thanks to you, I can't make it. A friend's going instead.” Mac shot her a quick, assessing glance as he folded the phone and dropped it back down inside his blouse. There wasn't much positive he could say about the size-42DD Maiden form that was even now threatening to cut him in two, except that it made a hell of a holster for phone and pistol alike. That elastic was strong stuff. If NASA hadn't discovered it, somebody should clue them in. He looked pointedly at her hand on the door handle. “You planning on getting out?”

“N-no.” She looked guilty as hell. Her hand dropped back down into her lap. “Because if you did, it could be dangerous.” She blanched. Frowning, he spelled it out. “You could get hit by a car.” The light changed, and Mac went through the intersection, heading down toward the Battery, which in his estimation was the most likely place to discover an abandoned car. The air coming out of the vents now was cool, and Mac rolled the windows up with a touch of a button. She sucked in her breath.

“Um, where are we going?” she asked, real polite. Her hands were in her lap now, clasped around the cell phone, and she was chewing on her lower lip. She looked sexy as hell doing that. Mac noticed, and wished he hadn't. Getting turned on by Sid's sex-kitten wife was no part of his plan. “You worried you're being kidnapped?” Realization dawned. There was amusement in his tone. She stopped chewing on her lip, thank God, and her eyes shot to his face.

“Maybe. Am I?” He had to give her this: she was no shrinking violet. There was challenge in the question, and in the look she gave him. His estimation of Sid's wife scooted a notch higher, even though it meant awarding Sid points for good taste. “Nah. You're as safe with me as you would be with your own mama, I promise,” he said soothingly, and turned right, onto an even more run-down street than the one they had left. Drunks and whores and people looking for trouble roamed the sidewalks here, ducking into seedy bars, keeping to the shadows away from the streetlights. Like cockroaches, most of these folks did their scuttling at night. Unlike cockroaches, some of them could be deadly. Fortunately, Mac knew the score. “Look, Debbie, now that I've had time to think it over I think I'll just call the police.” She lifted her cell phone ostentatiously; her forefinger hovered over the keypad without touching the buttons. Debbie? For a moment Mac was at a loss. Then he remembered his new persona, and grinned. Debbie-his ex-wife's name, conjured up out of the blue when he'd glanced into the mirror in the ladies' room at the Pink Pussycat and noticed that, except for the height and shoulders, he kind of resembled her-definitely was not a normal-looking person. No wonder she was nervous. “I thought you didn't want your husband to know you're out.” She started chewing her lower lip again. Mac, noticing, forced himself to concentrate on scanning the street for her stolen car. The hand holding the cell phone wavered. “I don't.” Her voice was low. “But ... “

“So how about if we see if we can't find your car?” She sucked in her breath, and her gaze flew to his face. “Do you think that's even remotely possible?” Mac felt a stab of compunction. Being married to Sid was obviously no picnic, and she was looking to him for help. But he was going to help her, he quieted his nascent knight-in-shining-armor, even if there was an ulterior motive to his assistance. At least, he was going to do what he could to get her car back for her. After that, he made no promises. He'd been gunning for Sid for too long to let a little thing like a flare of sympathy for his wife hold him back. “Maybe. Sounds like somebody put in an order for a Jaguar of the same make and model as yours. Either for parts, or somebody wants to acquire one on the cheap. I'm betting on parts, though.”