Protect Me, Love Page 14

  The figure didn’t move. Delia was still holding the quarter in one hand and the receiver in the other. She dropped the coin and plopped the receiver back into its carriage on the front of the phone box. The face of that box was covered in shiny chrome almost as reflective as a mirror even in this subdued light. In that instant, Delia registered movement reflected across the chrome face. Yet, she was standing still. Her long-honed, selfprotective instincts leapt instantly into place, and she spun around fast to catch the man behind her just enough off guard that he stepped backward in surprise.

  Delia had the impression that this was the man from the Waldorf stairway nearly hidden now beneath almost as much clothing as she was wearing. She didn’t take time or brain power to do more than let that impression flit rapidly past. She remembered the gun in her pocket. Her hand was into her coat and out again, brandishing the pistol before even she knew she was going to make that move.

  “Get away from me or I’ll shoot you dead right here,” she screamed with a vehemence she also hadn’t anticipated.

  He hesitated only a second, then turned and ran back up Beekman Street into the camouflage of the storm and was gone. Delia knew that she could have held him here at gunpoint while she used the phone to call Nick. She also knew how long it would take him to get down here and how difficult it would be to keep this man at bay till then. She couldn’t call the police, of course. Her fear of being arrested herself precluded seeking official help. She’d computed all of that in the seconds it took to draw the gun and shout her warning. She let her would-be assailant escape and watched him go. By the time she turned back toward South Street, the small, stooped figure was gone, too.

  Then, something very strange happened. Like a film rolling backward, Delia found herself seeing again what had happened just before she’d registered movement in the chrome faceplate of the telephone. In that moment the figure across South Street had started suddenly forward with one arm raised and head lifted. Maybe this person was trying to warn Delia against the danger behind her. She suspected this might be so, but that wasn’t what made her gasp as the scene flashed back to her now. In that fleeting instant she’d seen the face of the person scrambling toward her across South Street. She’d seen the face, and she knew who it was.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Nick heard the the sirens before he actually knew what they were. The sound jangled through his brain, but it was only noise to him at first, and far off, too. Noise and identification hadn’t yet come together. His head hurt, and that caught his immediate attention. He’d been hit. Maybe he couldn’t connect things up because he had amnesia or brain damage. It occurred to him, first through a fog and then more sharply, that if he could make this observation about amnesia or brain damage, he probably didn’t have either. At that instant he also knew that the noise was a police siren, and he could guess the most likely reason he was hearing it. Somebody in this building must have seen or heard what happened to Nick, maybe the thud of him falling to the floor after being zapped from behind. Maybe he’d cried out. He couldn’t remember. Very possibly, the witness hadn’t even opened his or her apartment door to look out. They just called 9-1-1 right off. New Yorkers were like that. They’d be cautious about putting themselves in danger while trying to help all the same.

  The cops were just about here, and Nick had to disappear fast. Part of him might have opted for some official help with whatever was happening to Delia, but asking for that help wasn’t in the job description, especially not now that he knew who Delia really was. She’d still be among the FBI Wanteds for the Denver case. There’s no statute of limitations on murder. Nick shrugged off the thought, shook his head clear and pulled himself the rest of the way up off the floor. He wasn’t yet feeling a hundred percent, but he had to make tracks out of here, anyway.

  He took longer getting back downtown than he had coming up. After slipping down the rear stairs and out of the fire door at Delia’s building, he employed a standard diversionary tactic—ducking into a building, watching to see if he was being followed, then ducking out another entrance. Ordinarily he’d have taken several cabs in winding directions, but the snow had slowed traffic too much to make that workable. Whoever clouted Nick from behind would have too little trouble tailing him from one traffic jam to the next. He traveled much of the way on foot before darting into a subway for the remainder of his trip to the Prince Street stop.

  Having Delia out of sight worried him much more than the lump forming behind his left ear, more even than finding out who’d given him that lump. It was bad business for a bodyguard to leave his client untended. He was feeling very uneasy about having done that even before the desk clerk at the Tivoli called out as Nick hurried past.

  “I don’t think your friend is upstairs,” she said.

  There was a hint of indignation in the way she said that. Her name was Mindy. She’d let Nick know on several occasions, in both subtle and not so subtle ways, that she found him interesting. He’d only noticed that because she had a punky look about her that reminded him a little of Rebecca, the way she’d been five years ago. Tonight he barely noticed Mindy or her petulant manner at all. He had Rebecca, in the flesh as Delia, to concern himself with now.

  “You said to keep an eye out for her. Right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Nick had mentioned his concern for Delia on the way out earlier. Mindy’s resentful tone suggested maybe that hadn’t been too smart a move on his part.

  “I live to please,” she gibed, “so I called your room a while ago and guess what?”

  “What?” Nick couldn’t help his impatience.

  “Well.” She dragged out the word and dangled the pencil she was holding from her fingers. “You’re not going to like it.”

  And you’re not going to like the way I jump over that desk and throttle you if you don’t get to the point, Nick almost said out loud.

  “Come on, Mindy. What gives?” he managed instead. “You wouldn’t want to get me in trouble with my client, would you?”

  “Is that what she is? Your client?”

  “Yes. She’s my client.” Nick had pulled his gloves off on his way into the lobby. He clenched his fists and dug his fingernails into his palms now to keep himself from doing that jumping and throttling he’d been thinking about a moment ago. Cajoling rather than bullying was the way to go here, no matter how maddening it might be.

  “Then you just may be in trouble after all,” Mindy said, “because she took off.”

  That was exactly what Nick didn’t want to hear. “Did you see her leave? Which way did she go?”

  “I didn’t see a thing. All I know is nobody answered when I rang your room, and I rang two or three times.”

  Nick barely remembered to mutter, “Thanks,” as he bolted for the stairway, which was a faster route than waiting for the Tivoli’s antiquated elevator. There was still hope that Mindy could be wrong. Delia might have slept through the phone ringing or maybe she was still in the bathtub at the time. Unfortunately, the race of his pulse and the dryness in his throat were telling Nick that neither of those was the case. Sure enough, when he got to his room, nobody was there.

  His first thought was that something could have gone wrong at PEI. The way Delia was so dedicated to that job of hers she’d have gone running back there to take care of things despite the weather or the danger. He grabbed the phone, pressed nine for an outside line and punched in the PEI number. He clutched the receiver altogether too hard through three long rings till the connection was made. His heart leapt when he heard, “Hello.” It was Delia’s voice.

  “Delia?”

  “You have reached the office of Protective Enterprises Incorporated,” her voice said.

  “Damn it.”

  Nick pounded his thigh once, hard, with his balled-up fist, as the voice on the telephone droned on. He’d reached the PEI answering machine. He’d hoped against hope that at least Lily, the temporary worker, would be there, but of course she would
have closed up and gone home by now, especially with this storm going on. Still, maybe Delia was there in the office and monitoring phone messages. That would explain why she didn’t have the service picking up instead of the machine. He snatched at this very slender possibility as if it had some real chance of proving true.

  “Delia,” he said as soon as the voice message ended and the answer recording began. “Are you there? It’s Nick. Pick up if you’re there.”

  He listened desperately for her to do what he asked but heard only silence in return.

  “Delia, are you there?” he asked again while his pleading tone was recorded for posterity.

  Still no answer came until finally the connection clicked off and a second later the dial tone began. Nick slammed the phone down. Where the hell was she? He paced the short distance from phone table to window. Outside, snow swirled and blew in the dim remnants of illumination that made their way up through the storm from the streetlights below. She was out in this, but he had no idea where. He also had no idea why, and that was driving him craziest of all. He’d told her to stay put. Why hadn’t she done that? What could be important enough to take her out of this room into danger?

  Another possibility crossed his mind and made his heart pound faster than ever. What if she’d been taken out of here by somebody else? He measured the likelihood of that. There were two ways into the Tivoli at ground level. The rear entrance was guarded by a heavy, metal, safety-locked door. Nobody could come through that without a tank or at least an automatic weapon and a lot of noise. The only other entry was straight into the lobby, and Mindy wouldn’t have missed that. She didn’t miss much. She also wouldn’t let anybody past her she didn’t know. She might be resentful of Nick having a woman in his room, but Mindy would do her job all the same.

  What about the fire escape? There was one from the street to Nick’s window, just like every room in the hotel. Fire regulations said it had to be that way. Nick remembered the handprint on the greasy surface of Delia’s bedroom windowsill. He leaned closer to his window and peered out at the sill. No marks there, and none on the fire escape platform, either. No handprints on the sill, no footprints on the fire escape. The snow was coming down hard and could have covered prints over. Still, Nick reasoned, there would have been at least indentations or some sign left behind, wet marks on the carpet inside the room or something like that. He made a quick inspection but found nothing. He was almost certain nobody had come in this way.

  All that remained was the outside chance someone could have slipped by Mindy downstairs. No matter how unlikely Nick figured that to be, he had to check it out for sure. He could have called down to the front desk, but he tore out of his room and headed for the stairway instead. He had to do something that required movement. If he was forced to stand passively on the end of a telephone line one more time, he just might jump straight out of his skin. He was that agitated, and a good deal of that agitation was because he knew he’d fallen down on the job. He’d left Delia alone. If he wasn’t so hell-bent to get down to the lobby as fast as he could, he might have stopped and kicked himself very hard in the behind.

  DELIA ROUNDED the corner onto Mercer Street with her head down. That seemed to be the best way to keep snow crystals from bombarding her face. The snowfall hadn’t slowed any in its intensity and now had taken on an icy edge that prickled her cheeks then melted there in a frigid sheen. If she hadn’t been hustling along as fast as she could go, she would have been quite cold even in her heavy overcoat, which was now frosted white all over.

  Delia trained her eyes just far enough ahead on the sidewalk to keep from running into anybody, though she was pretty much alone on this narrow street. She looked up fully just once to see the entrance to the Tivoli a couple of buildings away, then ducked her face back into her scarf while she scurried even faster and imagined how bright and warm the lobby would be. Consequently, Delia was pretty much barreling along when she plowed straight into somebody moving equally fast out of the hotel entrance. That somebody was Nick.

  “Delia, where the hell have you been?” were the first words out of his mouth in almost the same tone of voice she’d heard him use against the creep who’d attacked her on the stairway at the Waldorf. Delia’s imaginings of her longed-for arrival at the Tivoli had not included an angry greeting.

  “You don’t need to shout at me, and you can stop dragging me around, too.”

  He’d taken her by the arm and was pulling her back into the hotel lobby. The young woman at the reception desk watched them with considerable interest. Fortunately, no one else was present to see the scene Nick was making. Delia shook herself free of his grasp.

  “I came back here, and you were gone,” he said only a little less loudly and through gritted teeth. “I want to know where you went.”

  “I had some business to take care of.” Shaking her self had dislodged a cloud of snow that settled in a wet ring around her on the lobby floor.

  “I don’t believe you. I called your office, and you weren’t there.”

  “You don’t believe me?” Delia’s voice hit a louder register now. Five years of constant attention to keeping a low profile in public flew out the doorway into the snow. “Where do you get the nerve to accuse me of lying?”

  She was lying of course, but at the moment that seemed beside the point.

  “Look, for once I just want the straight truth out of you.

  From the sound of that, Nick’s anger was losing some of its heat while Delia’s did the opposite.

  “I told you I had business to attend to. Whether that business was in my office or not is none of your concern.”

  Her cheeks were flaming and not just from being stung by icy snow. She tore at her scarf to get it away from her face.

  “What you do is my concern. It’s also my job.”

  She could hear the attempt at reconciliation in his tone, but she wasn’t interested in reconciliation at the moment. For days now, she’d been angry at having her life invaded. Nick was catching the brunt of that accumulating rage.

  “Your job is to do what I tell you.” She didn’t care how mean or surly that sounded. “You seem to be forgetting you work for me.”

  She expected that to get his masculine dander up. Maybe she even wanted it to happen so there’d be a cathartic confrontation and she could vent the entire depth of her frustration right here in this hotel lobby. If that was her intention, Nick wasn’t cooperating. Instead of blasting back at her, he shrugged his broad shoulders then reached his arms around her and pulled her close to his chest. He didn’t seem to notice how she was dampening his clothing with melting snow.

  “I’m not forgetting anything about you. I haven’t been able to forget anything about you for the past five years.”

  Delia took a long breath as if to inhale those words deep into herself. In that instant, more about her was melting than the snow on their clothing. When she let her breath free again, her angry tension gushed out with it. She sunk against him and might have crumpled to the floor if his strong arms hadn’t held her firmly upright. All of a sudden she felt as if she might start crying. She would sob and sob till the bands of loss and fear and regret clamped for five years, maybe more, around her heart finally loosened their hold. She’d be free from sorrow at last, a liberation she hadn’t let herself even hope for. She caught her breath in sharply before that sobbing could begin. Otherwise, she feared, the deluge of tears might go on forever.

  “Let’s go somewhere and talk,” Nick whispered softly against her soggy knit cap. Delia felt his head turn in the direction of the reception desk. He must also be aware of the public spectacle they had become. He was probably embarrassed. He did live in this place part of the time, after all, and wouldn’t want to make a scene here.

  “Okay,” she managed to croak as she clung to his closeness just a moment longer.

  “There’s a cafe in the next block where we can get something to eat,” he said.

  His words brought Delia’s st
omach suddenly back into focus for her, as if it hadn’t been part of her anatomy till now. She tried to remember when she’d last eaten. Oh, yes, a couple of bites of a deli sandwich back in Nick’s room what felt like a very long time ago.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  Delia hesitated no more than an instant before pulling away from him far enough to look up into his face.

  “Yes, I am,” she said, and she wasn’t just referring to the gnawing in her stomach. She knew right then that she was hungry for him—his company, his protection and, later on, his body.

  “Let’s go,” he said, taking her arm.

  Nick glanced back briefly toward the reception desk, and Delia did the same. The young woman there was scowling at them openly. She looked like she was really upset to have them carrying on so emotionally in her lobby. Delia could understand that. Still, she couldn’t help thinking how, at the Waldorf, the staff would act as if they hadn’t seen a thing.

  “By the way,” Nick said as he opened the door to guide Delia through, “I got your pills. Do you need to take one now?”

  Delia had to think for a moment what he was talking about. She’d all but forgotten the ruse she’d used for sending him off on his wild-goose chase so she could get away from him on her own.

  “No,” she said after the details came clear again. “I’m fine.”

  If Nick was taken aback by how much that differed from her earlier insistence on the urgency of his errand, he didn’t let it show. Instead he turned her toward him before they left the shelter of the Tivoli entryway and wound her scarf back around her neck to shield her from the storm.

  “Good,” he said. “That’s what I want—for you to be fine.”

  The deep timbre of his voice pulsed through her like warm, vibrating sunlight. That sensation remained with her for a long moment. Not till it had worn off did she think to ask if he’d had any trouble finding the pills at her apartment. They were heading down the block by then. As they hurried on, Nick told her what had happened to him. She was still exclaiming with concern when they reached the café. The first thing she did after they’d ducked inside was to pull off first her glove, then the baseball cap he was wearing and start feeling behind his left ear where he said he’d been struck.