1
“I hear you’re the man to see if you want someone killed.”
That’s how she introduced herself on the phone. It took him by surprise and not much did anymore. He didn’t like surprises.
Ordinarily, Jack would have ended the conversation right then with a dial tone, but there was something in her voice. A soft tug of reluctant vulnerability beneath the tough fabric of her words. It made him pause when he should have relied on self-preserving instinct. A dangerous error in judgment.
But there was something about her voice.
Instead of severing the connection, he leaned back in his age-worn leather chair and shifted his feet to his cleared desktop. Maybe it was an unexpected empty calendar that had him willing to waste a few minutes baiting his uninvited caller. He only visited this shabby little office in the city about once a month to collect bills and to check the answering machine. He kept it for a mailing address and the air of permanence as a business entity. After the first thirty minutes surrounded by traffic and chaotic noise, he was always ready to head back to the proverbial hills. That she’d managed to catch him during that slim window of opportunity was reason enough to give her a few more minutes of his time. His curiosity peaked. He wanted to know how she’d found him and why she’d begun with that eye-popping statement.
“I’m flattered,” he drawled, reaching out of habit to switch on the small recorder that would preserve their dialogue. “And just where did you hear that?”
“I know a lot of people in your business, Mr. Chaney.”
Evasion wasn’t the best way to get on his good side. His tone sharpened. “And what business is that? The killing business? If that’s true, why do you need me?”
“The law and order business, Mr. Chaney.” Her words picked up an interesting bite, too. Interesting enough for him to smile as he began to doodle lightning bolts and rain clouds on the blank calendar page.
“Ah, correct me if I’m wrong but law and order isn’t about killing and it isn’t what I do.”
“That’s why I need you. This isn’t about law. It’s about justice and your special talents. Can you help me?”
“I don’t know you, Miss—”
There was silence, then she supplied, “D’Angelo.” Why was that so familiar to him? Another warning he decided to ignore for the moment.
“Like I said, I don’t know you, Miss D’Angelo, and I don’t do business with people I don’t know.”
“I can pay you.” How suddenly desperate she sounded as that persuasion rushed out. “The money doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter to me, either.”
“What does, Mr. Chaney? What will make you agree to meet with me? If you’d just listen to what I have to say—”
“Lady,” he interrupted smoothly, “everybody’s got a story to tell. I’m not a priest or a four-year-old, so why should I want to listen to your story?”
She cursed in a low aside, passionately, using words that made his brows arch and his lips purse. She continued with a rough rumble of anger that he found…well, he found it sexy as hell.
“I was told you were a professional, a man who could get things done. I see I was misled, Mr. Chaney. I’m sorry for wasting your time and mine when it’s clear you’re not interested.”
“Did I say that?”
His quiet interjection had her hauling in her temper. He could hear it in the sudden silence and the quick pace of her breathing that followed. Finally she asked for clarification in a husky whisper.
“What are you saying? That you’ll help me?”
He closed his eyes. The ripple of raw silk being drawn over the head of a bed partner in the night incited the same kind of urgent response as the whiskey-edged melody of her voice. Like soft blues music and slow, wet kisses. Exciting enough to make him linger in the exhaust-laced and crime-infested hell of Detroit. This was a woman he had to meet face-to-face.
“No promises. I’m not big on premature commitments.” He wasn’t big on commitments of any kind. Caution was his middle name. “We’ll share a cup of coffee in some very public place and look each other over first.”
“And then?”
“Then, if I like what I see, you can tell me your story. But first—” his tone toughened, getting back to the important point “—I have to know how you got my name and this number. I’m not listed in Killers-R-Us.”
She hesitated, but only for a moment. “I got it from Stan Kovacs.”
Of all the references she could have given, she picked the one he couldn’t toss off with a shrug. And that made him all the more suspicious, and uncomfortable, as though some trap was about to be sprung now that he’d been suckered in with the right bait. But he wasn’t sticking his neck out just yet.
“Ah, good old Stan. He still into fitness and jogging to work every day?”
Humor brushed like a warming breeze against the chill of her anxiety. “I don’t know which Stan Kovacs you know, but this one would have a coronary going up the steps of a bus too fast.”
Tension eased from his shoulders as that picture came to mind. Good old soft-on-the-outside, sharp-as-a-razor inside Stan. Jack chuckled softly. “Yeah, that’s Stan. How do you know him?”
“He was a friend of my father’s. And mine. He told me to mention his name if you got…difficult.”
Yes, that’s how Stan would describe him. She was obviously in the old P.I.’s small inner circle of friends. But she hadn’t played that trump card right off the bat to smooth her way into his good graces. She’d held it back until he’d given her no choice but to lay it down. Perhaps Ms. D’Angelo preferred difficult to trading on favors.
And damned if he didn’t like that about her.
On the blank desktop calendar, Jack wrote, “Call Stan/D’Angelo.” To his husky-voiced wannabe client, he added, “All right, Miss D’Angelo, do you know where Cuppa Jo’s is on Woodward?”
“I’ll find it.” The steely determination was back, fortified by his momentary lapse in sanity. He hoped his libido wasn’t leading him into more trouble than he wanted but he seemed to have forgotten his middle name. Oh, yeah. Caution.
“Seven o’clock.” That would give him time to do the necessary background checks so he wouldn’t feel so off balance.
“How will I know you?”
He smiled into the receiver. “Well, it won’t be by the violin case and red carnation. I’ll find you.”
By seven o’clock, he’d know everything there was to know about Miss Smoky Voice D’Angelo.
And then he’d listen to her story.
Cuppa
