Never Trust A Lady Read online

  From the darkness came a doleful, “I knew I shouldn’t have let myself gain those five extra pounds.”

  A snort burst from him, like a pressure, valve letting go. He couldn’t think of anything else he dared add to that, but he was thinking that if she was carrying around five extra pounds, they felt perfectly all right to him.

  It seemed an hour or two before the truck slowly righted itself. Hawk took Jane by the elbows and gently pushed her back to vertical, muttering something like, “There y’go…”

  Her contribution was a breathless whisper. “Thanks…sorry about that.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “How ’bout this,” she said brightly, after a brief, mysterious silence. And then he could feel her stirring at his feet, spreading blankets. “We sit facing each other-you know, legs alongside? Come on-you sit right there, like that, and I’ll sit-” and once more he heard her huffing and scuffling around as she got herself settled “…like this.”

  He thought about turning on the flashlight again but didn’t. It was bad enough imagining the close quarters; at least he didn’t have to see the legs that lay warm and firm along the outside of his, the feminine hip nudging his ankle, the slender foot-“Hey,” he said, “you took your shoes off.”

  “Take yours off, too, if you like,” she said generously. “I don’t mind if they smell.”

  Hawk gave a single whoop of laughter, he couldn’t help it.

  But it was a struggle, trying to push off one laced-up athletictype shoe with the toe of the other. And he didn’t dare lean over too far, because he knew if he got the taste of her in his mouth again, the smell of her… Then he felt her hands, strong, no-nonsense hands. A moment later, first one foot, then the other experienced the chill of suddenly exposed, sweat-damp socks. “Thanks,” he said gruffly.

  “Don’t mention it.” Her voice was as cool as his socks. “Want a blanket?” -

  “Yeah, please.” He felt the weight of the packing blanket fall across his knees, felt her pull and tug it until she had it wrapped snugly around his ankles and feet. “Hand me a blanket,” he heard himself say. “and I’ll do you.”

  There was a curious pain in his chest, like something stuck way down deep in his esophagus, something he couldn’t get rid of. And hard as he tried to stop the memory, it came anyway…

  He and Jen, sitting on opposite ends of the old sofa in the den at her parents’ house…a fire roaring in the fireplace and half-drunk mugs of cocoa on the floor. He’d been home from college on Thanksgiving break, her parents were out for the evening at some party or other, and they’d just been rough-housing in the unexpected snow, the first fall of the season. He could hear Jen’s voice, with that bossy self-confidence he’d loved so much, saying, “Here-you do me and I’ll do you.” His icy-cold feet in her lap, hers in his…he couldn’t remember who’d started the tickling, but inevitably they’d wound up in a tangle on the rug, kissing breathlessly and with escalating passion. It had been the first time they’d made love…

  “There you go,” he said as he shoved Jane’s swaddled feet back down beside him, wishing he could do something about the roughness in his hands and voice, hoping she wouldn’t read into that things about him he wasn’t ready for her to know. “Hey, how about some of that food, now, huh?”

  “Okay, let’s see, which do you prefer, peanuts or cookies?”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t care-you choose.”

  “Well, maybe we should each have some of both-protein and carbohydrates-what do you think?”

  God, she sounded like his mother. Well, okay, not his mother, but somebody’s. Like June Cleaver. “Fine. Need the light?”

  “No, that’s okay. Give me your hand.”

  “Come on, Tom, you get on, too! Quick, give me your hand, give me your hand!”

  “Wait-I want to take one more picture… wave next time you come around, okay? Jase, wave at Daddy, now…”

  He put his hand into the darkness and felt her cool fingers close around his. He could feel his heart beating.

  “Ooh…I hate the way they make these dam packages of peanuts so hard to open, don’t you? I just hope I don’t lose them all in the dark…”

  He took a breath. It was like dragging shards of glass through his chest. “Want some help?”

  “No, that’s okay, I’ve got it now… Mmm, boy, those taste good.”

  For a while, Hawk sat with his mind in neutral and listened to the sounds of her genteel munching, giving his emotions time to drift back into quiet waters. When he felt pretty sure he was back on course again, he opened his own stubborn little foil pack and downed the peanuts in a couple of greedy handfuls, figuring they’d make more of an impact on his stomach that way. The cookies he nibbled; he wasn’t much of a sweets person. Jen had been the one-

  “For once I’m not sorry I have a bit of a sweet tooth,” said Jane with a sigh. The cookie wrapper crinkled softly in the darkness.

  Suddenly feeling as if he had rocks under his butt, Hawk shifted and growled like a bad-tempered dog, “All right, let’s cut the crap. Out with it. Get it over with.”

  He felt her legs twitch as she gasped, “I beg your pardon?” But she said it on a little ripple of laughter, and he had a feeling she wasn’t really all that surprised.

  “You’re wondering what the hell this is all about,” he went on, his voice still guttural and harsh with diverted emotions. “You said I owe you an explanation. So go on. This is your chance. Ask your questions.”

  There was a pregnant little silence, and then a solemn, “You’ll tell me the truth?”

  He gave a short, hard laugh. “Well, I’ll try.”

  Questions. Jane took a bite of cookie and chewed thoughtfully. Funny, up until the moment she’d stepped out of that taxicab in Georgetown, all she’d been able to think about was questions. And boy, had she wanted answers! She’d been feeling angry, victimized, threatened and just plain scared.

  But ever since that tussle with Aaron Campbell, well, how on earth to describe it? She’d felt…exhilarated. And at the same time, calm. Right now she felt strong. Confident. And yes, Tom was right, in a strange way, she was sort of enjoying this. She was alive, uninjured, and it didn’t really matter what the explanation was for whatever it was she’d stumbled into: never again would Jane Carlysle be able to say that nothing ever happened to her!

  “I’m not sure I know where to begin,” she said finally. She frowned, trying her best to inject a degree of sternness into her voice and thinking that what it reminded her of was when the girls were little, and she’d been forced to discipline them when actually she was secretly entertained by the mischief they’d done.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t still want-need-answers and explanations; goodness no. But somehow the urgency was gone. She felt strangely at ease with Tom Hawkins now-this mystifying stranger she hadn’t even met before yesterday, and whose bundled bare feet were now snuggled cozily under her elbow. She wasn’t sure she could have explained why, it was just a feeling she had. The feeling she was going to have all the time in the world to learn about this man, including the answers to questions she hadn’t even thought of yet.

  “I guess,” she said at last, dabbing cookie crumbs from her lips with the tip of a forefinger, “you could begin by telling me who you are.”

  Chapter 8

  “Interpol?” For one wild instant she thought he must be joking. But for some reason, she didn’t follow up on her initial impulse to laugh.

  The flashlight’s beam slashed across her blanket-covered legs. When it steadied, and she saw that Tom was reaching for something inside his jacket, she jerked slightly and frowned; that gesture reminded her of something, but she couldn’t think what. Then he pulled out a wallet-no, an ID case-and without a word handed it to her and trained the light on it. She studied it carefully and then gave it back, heart thumping.

  “My goodness,” she said faintly.

  Her thoughts were racing. So he’d told her the truth, about bein
g a policeman, at least. And this was what he meant by “not in this jurisdiction.” But who’d have thought…Interpol? It seemed so exotic to her, like something out of a movie, or a spy novel-James Bond stuff.

  Her head was spinning, and she couldn’t think which question should logically come next. She also felt a little testy. She wished he’d just explain, dammit. But she could tell by his silence that she was going to have to drag this, whatever it was, out of him, piece by piece. She had an idea that the habit of secrecy was deeply ingrained in this man.

  But it hasn’t always been so. Oh, yes, somehow she knew that. Once he’d had a friend, a best friend, with whom he’d shared his innermost thoughts, his secrets, his anger and pain. A friend for whom he still grieved.

  “But why…” Her throat was suddenly filled with gravel. She cleared it and tried again. “Why are you here? What do you want with me?”

  Then her breath caught, and she blurted it out in a rush, even though she was sure she already knew the answer. “It’s the painting, isn’t it? I was afraid of that. It’s valuable, after all, isn’t it? And of course it’s stolen. I knew I liked that painting too much. Damn.”

  She felt Tom’s knees move restively beside hers. “It’s not stolen,” he said gruffly. “And as far as I know, it’s not valuable.”

  “Well, it certainly is to someone,” Jane snapped, impatient with the stingy way he was doling out information. “Aaron Campbell, for starters. Not to mention the person who was in my hotel room last night. Which reminds me…” She was relieved to feel the anger, finally, which was much more comfortable and a lot less complicated than what she’d recently been feeling toward the man whose legs lay so firm and warm against hers. So relieved that she fired her suspicions and questions at him recklessly, and without her usual diplomacy. “You being there, that wasn’t any accident, was it? So, who were you following, Agent Hawkins? Was it Campbell, or me?”

  “You, of course.” His voice, in response to her anger, was hard and without expression, though it took on a note of dark irony when he added, “I’d rather hoped we’d left Mr. Campbell behind.”

  “Okay, so who is he?”

  She heard the soft hiss of an exhalation. “I wish to God I knew.”

  “But you do think it was him in my room last night?”

  “Let’s just say I hope it was.”

  “You…hope? Why?”

  There was another sigh, a whispery sound like wind-driven sand. He said almost gently, “Think, Carlysle. Would you rather have one other player out there somewhere, dogging our trail, or two?”

  “Player?” The word exploded on a puff of air, as if something had squeezed her chest. She wondered what had become of her former serenity and confidence; all of a sudden, her mouth was dry and her heart was hammering against the wall of her chest. “What is this,” she demanded, “some kind of game? You know, dammit, for somebody who’s supposed to be enlightening me, you’re making me awfully confused!”

  “I’m trying,” he muttered, shifting again. “To enlighten you, I mean. It’s just…not easy to explain.”

  She wished he’d stop moving. It made it hard for her to hang on to the anger. She muttered unsteadily, “You’re making this sound very complicated.”

  “Trust me, it is. And there’s a lot I can’t tell you.”

  There was a long pause. Jane listened to the monotonous drone of eighteen tires on asphalt, fighting for the calm that had deserted her, searching for an anchor of normalcy in a world that had suddenly become unreal. As if, she thought, she’d somehow stepped into a movie-a Hollywood thriller, something starring Sylvester Stallone, or Arnold whatever-his-name-was.

  But the painting. That was certainly real. And dammit, it was hers.

  She cleared her throat and said with a great deal more firmness, both in her voice and her resolve, “Okay, then, tell me about the painting. If it’s not stolen, and it’s not valuable-”

  “It’s not the painting.” There was another, shorter pause, during which she heard a familiar crackle, which she identified as the wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. Then the crackling ceased and his arm relaxed, coming to rest on the mound of her swaddled feet. She heard him sigh; evidently he’d decided that under the circumstances he was going to have to get through this without the aid of nicotine. She could almost feel him girding himself, and the words came as if each one represented a victory in a small, private tug-of-war. “I-we have…there’s reason to believe that a piece of information was, uh, hidden somewhere on or in that painting. A piece of information that would make it very valuable indeed to…certain people.” He subsided, seemingly exhausted by that effort.

  But if he thought he was finished, Jane had news for him. “Information? Hidden? In my painting?” She fired the volley at him without drawing breath. “What sort of information?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.” He sounded every inch an officer of the law. Jane had to resist an urge to kick him.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said in exasperation. “If there was something you wanted in my painting, why didn’t you just say so? If you’d only told me who you were and what you wanted, don’t you think I’d have been more than happy to cooperate?”

  He was silent for just a little too long. Illumination came as he was finally drawing breath for an explanation, and she got there first, overriding it with a startled gasp, then a squeak of incredulous laughter. “You thought I was after the…whatever it is in the painting? That I was one of the, uh… That’s it-you did, didn’t you? Oh, for heaven’s sake.” And borrowing one of her daughters’ favorite expressions, she added, “Get real.”

  “You did bid on the painting,” Tom said in his stuffiest and most inflexible policeman’s monotone. “You and Campbell were the only ones hanging in there. And then…” he paused a chilling instant “…there was just you.”

  “Yes, because Mr. Campbell fainted…” The word trailed off as she suddenly found herself running short of air. “Oh, but-oh, God, you don’t mean you think somebody did something to him, do you? That he didn’t just…faint?”

  It must have been then that full comprehension finally hit her. It was like a blast of cold, dank air from a freshly opened tomb, a vault filled with dreadful, frightening, unthinkable things from a world that was totally alien to her. A world of violence and evil. Chilled and clammy, she whispered, “Oh, you can’t think I would do anything like that.”

  “It seemed a possibility at the time,” said Tom in a neutral voice.

  “That’s why you followed us,” Jane went on as if he hadn’t spoken. Her voice was low and still tinged with the horror that had overtaken her when she added curiously, “How did you manage to do that, by the way? When Connie and I left the auction, you were standing on the loading platform smoking a cigarette. I saw you. You couldn’t have gotten to your car in time to see which way we’d gone. It’s impossible.”

  “Nothing’s impossible.” She didn’t need light to see the twisted, ironic little smile. “But as a matter of fact, I used a GPS tracker.”

  “GPS? What on earth’s that?”

  “Global Positioning System-tracking by satellite. I put a signaling device in your friend’s van when I was helping you stow your stuff.” She felt him jerk slightly, and thought perhaps he’d shrugged. And then he offered an ambiguous, “Sorry.”

  “And that’s how you found me today,” she said flatly, choosing not to hear the apology, if indeed that’s what it had been. “Isn’t it? You didn’t just ‘happen’ to be there, either, at The Wall.”

  “Yes…” there was a long exhalation “…and no.”

  Her throat was tight suddenly, her eyes itchy. Why did she feel such a sense of disappointment and betrayal? Remembering the way her heart had gone out to him in his vulnerability and pain, she thought, God, Jane, how stupid you are.

  She was silent for a long time, waiting for that constriction in her throat to relax, all the while running his explanations over and over in her mind.
Several things bothered her. “But,” she said finally, “you said the device was in Connie’s van. So how come-”

  “There’s also one in your bag.” His voice was soft, almost diffident. “I put it there last night.”

  “I see.” Last night, in her room. And she’d been so grateful for his nearness and comfort. God, she felt awful. Hollow… queasy. She took a deep breath, trying to fill the emptiness inside her, if only momentarily.

  “Tell me,” she said, and was both startled and pleased that her voice sounded so steady. “Was any of what you told me true? About your father, I mean. And…your friend.” She wondered why his answer mattered so much.

  Or why she felt such an odd little twinge-relief that was almost like pain-when he answered, with the gravel of sincer ity in his voice, “Oh, yeah, that was true. All of it.”

  “And when…” Carefully, carefully, Jane. She began again, now with forced lightness. “When did you, uh, change your mind about me being involved in all this? Or maybe I should ask-”

  “Oh, that was last night.” He still sounded hoarse but with a note of anger himself, now. “To be precise, when I saw you standing there in that doorway with the light behind you and that damn toy pistol in your hands. Right then and there I said to myself, nobody’s that stupid. She must be innocent.”

  “Thanks,” said Jane tartly, “I think.” Then she cocked her head to one side, listening, trying to catch a replay of the exchange. There was something he’d just said…

  But he wouldn’t let her concentrate, plunging on in that newly charged, guttural voice. “Lady, you’ve no idea what you’re mixed up in. There are people who’d kill for what’s hidden in that painting. People who have killed. Do you understand me?”

  Her hands, she discovered, were knotted tightly together in her lap. In spite of that, and the fact that all her muscles were quivering with tension, her voice once again emerged with gratifying calm. “Have killed… Do you mean Campbell?”