Protect Me, Love Read online

  On that fateful morning, Delia also took with her the possibility of staying free and alive. She would be safe as long as she was careful to keep the connection severed between a headstrong, flamboyant young fugitive from a murder charge and the no-nonsense woman she’d since become. Still, there was a hint of her former self left as she bent over the jewelry case, dazzled for an instant by its sparkle. She was, of course, not recognizable as Becky. She’d been anorexic thin five years ago. She was heavier and healthier now, with flesh and curves she’d never hoped to have back then. She was also dark-haired rather than blond, with her hair grown past her shoulders instead of spiky short.

  Even more drastic was the transformation in her style and bearing. She’d been prone to zingy little outfits in those days, lots of midriff showing in summer and tight leather in winter. By contrast, Delia Marie Barry had a closetful of tailored suits, all chic and flattering but definitely strictly business. Even the way she carried herself had undergone a drastic change. Self-possessed and purposeful, that’s what her city sidewalk stride said about her today. She hadn’t darted restlessly from one place to the next since the day circumstance set her on a path so crammed with things to watch out for and take care of that there was hardly a second left for restlessness. The only place she let the more zany side of herself loose these days was in her mind, and maybe once in a while at the Hester Street Settlement House where she volunteered as often as possible.

  She allowed herself only one slim connection with her past. It was there on her right hand now, pressed against the glass of the Saks Fifth Avenue display case, She’d taken off her gloves and stuffed them into her coat pocket as she passed through the revolving door. On the smallest finger of that hand she wore the tiny ring given to her by her mother just before she died. Delia was fourteen then, ten years away from calling herself by that name. She’d never worn the ring for fear of losing it. She’d tucked it into the bottom of the first of those velvet trays that would one day fill a wall safe nearly to the top. She’d kept it hidden, hers alone to look at and cherish. The narrow golden band of interwoven aspen leaves was the only piece of jewelry she didn’t sell five years ago. She’d slipped it on her finger instead, the one memento she allowed herself to keep herself tethered, however tenuously, to some history of herself. Otherwise she feared she might break loose from earth entirely and be set adrift in a universe where nobody, not even herself, could ever know who she really was. That tiny anchor sparkled now, in the discreetly modulated light of Christinas at Saks, for everyone to see.

  DELIA TURNED out to be a natural for the bodyguard business. She’d spent the last years of her Denver life shadowed constantly. She was a wealthy young heiress then, a prime target for kidnappers and con artists. She’d also been so rebellious that she wouldn’t allow herself to be accompanied directly. The men assigned to her protection had to follow her around. In that period, from the deaths of her father and stepmother in a fiery helicopter crash in the Rockies to the morning of her escape from an inevitable homicide charge, she’d learned every possible way to evade her bodyguard. She’d also learned a lot about the protection business just by watching them watching her.

  Delia knew the world of the wealthy and powerful from the inside out, how they live, how they think, what they require. Five years ago, when she’d needed a business to go into, personal security was tailor-made for her. She’d sold her jewelry for enough to get started, and keep going until Protective Enterprises Incorporated became profitable, with something left over to invest. The trick was to accomplish all of that while maintaining the low profile necessary to avoid detection by whoever might still be after her—the police, the Lester family, the person or persons who’d set her up for a very long fall in the first place. Her cover had to be deep and flawless.

  Delia Marie Barry—office manager, assignment coordinator, functionary extraordinaire—was the answer. As far as anybody knew, Delia ran the company for a fictitious gentleman named Joseph Singleton. Meanwhile, PEI’s Total Confidentiality System gave her an excuse for being secretive. Nobody other than Delia and the bodyguard himself knew what services an individual customer had contracted for or why. Thus, Delia kept one hand from knowing what the other was doing while her cover story remained comfortably intact. Her obsession with secrecy turned out to be very good for business, as well. The wealthy and powerful live in fear of robbers, kidnappers, extortionists, and swindlers, of enemies in general, and visibility makes them targets. PEI offered the closest thing to anonymity they could find. In less than three years, PEI was far enough into the black to afford the fancy Rockefeller Center address, which attracted steady customers.

  Delia strolled the block from Saks to 30 Rockefeller Center, almost secure in the belief that the Total Confidentiality System protected both her clients and herself. Almost secure, but not quite.

  Chapter Two

  Delia thought of herself as having a three hundred sixty degree awareness. She’d trained herself to be especially vigilant on foot, so much so that she sometimes missed out on what she might be looking at because of what she had to be intent upon looking for. Some might have said she could relax now. Five years had passed without incident. She’d even weathered that touchy situation last fall when one of Morty Lancer’s twin daughters came to PEI to have her sister guarded for a while. Delia’d given an Academy Award performance, and no one ever made the connection between her and Morty. Still, she tried to be on her toes every minute whether she liked living that way or not. The truth was, sometimes she got so sick of her life she wanted to scream. She didn’t do that, of course. Screaming attracted too much attention, and the best security device was to keep yourself from being noticed. So she did her screaming on the inside.

  The worst part was not being able to get close to anybody because that would require too much trust on her part. Trust had been her watchword for so long she sometimes wondered if she’d be able to trust anybody now at all. All of which made for a lonely life she might not have been able to stand if it weren’t for her work. She filled her life with her business. She kept herself at it long and hard. She’d done that this afternoon, which was why she happened to be leaving the office later than usual.

  She usually tried to get out of here while the streets were still crowded from building front to curb with hundreds and thousands of nine-to-fivers hustling to get where they wanted to go at the end of the workday. She’d slide right into that press of souls who paid little or no attention to her though she kept a close eye on them. She also quit work at a different time each day. A predictable routine can be the downfall of anyone trying to avoid discovery. Even making allowance for varying her routine, tonight she was leaving the office later than she would have preferred.

  The twenty-eighth floor was deserted with no light shining from any of the doorways. The shadowed cavern of the long, narrow corridor suddenly reminded her of a tomb. The minute she heard herself having that thought, she knew she was spooked. She got that way at times. It came with the territory of being constantly watchful. She always turned out to have spooked herself over nothing. She reminded herself of that now as she hurried toward the elevators. Still, the skin on the back of her neck felt as if it might be trying to shrink off her spine.

  She poked the elevator button several times in rapid succession though she knew that wouldn’t make it arrive any faster. She wanted to get out of this building, which was putting her more in mind of a mausoleum by the minute. The clunk of the elevator landing at her floor and the doors opening were music to her ears. She was also relieved to find the car occupied until it occurred to her that she’d never seen this guy around here before. She was inside by then with her finger pressing the door-close button. She might be able to switch to the door-open button and make a dash for it back onto twenty-eight, but what then? If this was a bad guy, he could easily follow her out into the deserted hallway, and she’d be on her own with him again. The lobby button was already lit, and the door was closing. She told h
erself he was probably okay and did her best to relax.

  She could feel the eyes of the car’s other occupant watching her. Reaching into her coat pocket, she gripped the thin, black canister of pepper spray she kept there. She wished it were Mace instead, but that was illegal in New York State. There were places to get it, but she was as leery of getting into trouble with the police and having the past catch up with her that way as she was of the bad guys who might be after her. She restrained herself from punching the lobby button again and gripped the metal canister so hard she was in danger of peppering her pocket lining.

  The elevator reached the lobby level at last, without stopping for a single additional passenger. Delia really was getting out of here late tonight. In the lobby, the guard usually on duty was nowhere to be seen. Delia took a right toward the Rockefeller Plaza end of the building. She fully expected her elevator companion to be hot on her heels, but when she glanced behind her she saw him headed in the opposite direction toward the Sixth Avenue exit. He was also glancing back at her with a very wary expression on his face. She understood then what must have happened. He’d been watching her jumpy performance in the elevator so closely because he thought he might be trapped in there with a nut case who could leap on him at any moment. Delia almost laughed out loud at how close she’d come to staining his well-tailored topcoat with a liberal dose of pepper spray.

  Still, she kept herself alert. She took a few deep breaths to make sure she was calm, as well, as she passed through the revolving doors out of 30 Rock Center and into the street. The spectacle of the Plaza Christmas tree took her by surprise as always, towering into the sky just across from the entrance to her office building. What looked like a million colored lights sparkled from the branches of the majestic pine that was one of the city’s most popular yuletide attractions. Delia permitted herself a moment of holiday heart-swell before returning full attention to her immediate surroundings.

  That’s when she saw him. She was checking window reflections, as was her habit, pretending to examine the merchandise while she scanned the crowd behind her for exactly what she’d just spotted—a person whose general demeanor didn’t quite fit the profile of a random face in the crowd. He was a tall man and big enough to give her considerable trouble in a confrontation. He was also just a bit too watchful, especially in her direction. Delia’s years in hiding, along with her experience in the protection business, had given her an extra keen sense for detecting such behavior. That detection apparatus was out of tune back in the elevator. She’d been spooked then, and that could knock everything out of kilter. She wasn’t spooked now. She was almost a hundred percent certain that this man was on her tail. Still, she didn’t run away or even pick up speed. She steadied her pace into her usual gait. The man might have followed her on other occasions. If that was the case and if he was good at the shadowing game, he’d be likely to notice any unusual behavior on her part, such as taking off at a gallop down the street.

  The holiday crowd was too dense here to make much progress anyway, even at a run. Tourists lined the opposite sidewalk several deep and spilled over the curb into the street to gape up at the tree. Delia had turned right out of 30 Rock Center toward Forty-ninth Street. She continued in that direction to the corner then turned onto Forty-ninth and crossed the road pavement in the direction of Fifth Avenue. She glanced back over her shoulder as she crossed. The tall man was still following. She returned her attention to looking for an opportunity, whatever it might be, to get away from him. A crowd lined this side of the Plaza, as well, leaning toward the brass rail to watch the ice skaters spin around Rockefeller Center Rink beneath the imposing tree. Bright strains of holiday music piped from speakers camouflaged by decorative evergreens. Excitement charged the air. Delia kept herself steely calm by contrast as she searched for an escape route.

  She eased her black wool beret out of her left coat pocket while her other hand once again gripped the pepper canister on the right. She generally kept her hair a dark brownish, innocuous shade, only faintly auburn, but the hairdresser had missed that mark this time. The result was more conspicuously coppery than she’d intended and far easier to pick out in a crowd than Delia’s usual mousey dark brown would have been. She needed a chance to be out of her pursuer’s range of vision long enough to make her first move at disappearing while she was still right in front of him. She spotted that chance halfway down the block.

  A glass kiosk framed in polished brass marked the street level access to the lower concourse of Rockefeller Plaza. Too many people were already trying to squeeze into the small, domed enclosure. Delia wedged in among them, shoving herself into the center of the pack. Despite her “Excuse me’s,” there were grumblings and remarks about rude New Yorkers from every side. She concentrated on wriggling out of her coat with one hand while jamming her beret on her head and stuffing her hair under it with the other. The glass-andbrass elevator car purred to a stop three people in front of her. The elevator door, which constituted the inside wall of the kiosk, eased open and the press of bodies tumbled through, carrying Delia with it.

  Her maneuverings with her coat and hat had further irritated her fellow passengers. She took a couple of elbows to the ribs in response, but she didn’t care. She was inside the elevator and headed downward, leaving the street and her human shadow behind. She’d caught sight of him hurrying past as she jammed herself into the kiosk elevator. He was peering ahead into the street crowd at the time. That single glimpse of his exasperated expression convinced Delia she’d been right. He was searching the street for her.

  The elevator door opened at the lower level, and Delia spilled out along with the crowd. She ignored their parting accusatory glances, too relieved to be bothered by a bit of public embarrassment. The sparkling white marble concourse seemed too pristine a place for anything very horrible to happen. That lightened her state of mind only a little and not enough to keep her from coming to the obvious and unavoidable conclusion. She needed help, and it had to be somebody good. It also had to be somebody she didn’t usually employ at PEI. She needed to keep this personal situation as separate from her work life as possible. The elevator had deposited her only a few feet from the entrance to the Sea Grill Restaurant. She walked to the doorway and glanced in the direction of the bar. She’d be able to sit down there and think for a moment, though she already had an answer to her dilemma in mind.

  She’d kept track of Nick Avery through the bodyguard network ever since she started PEI, but she’d never hired him. That would have been too risky, both to her hidden identity and to her determination to avoid personal involvements. She’d never completely abandoned the fantasy of him that kept her company in her loneliest moments. She’d specifically kept track of when he was here in New York, where he generally spent any time he might have between jobs. She even knew where he stayed when he was in town, at an out-of-the-way hotel in Soho. She’d imagined going there many times, just to catch a glimpse of him, but she never had. He was in Manhattan now. She rummaged in her coat pocket, under the canister of pepper spray, for the quarters she kept there. She picked up a coin then dropped it again. She couldn’t call Nick. It was too risky. Still, as she declined the steward’s offer to take her coat and headed past the gleaming tables and away from the glass wall onto the white marble concourse, Delia’s heart was beating very hard with what felt like anticipation.

  Chapter Three

  Nick Avery had been living in hotels so long they’d begun to feel like home to him, or as much like home as he cared to deal with. He’d have an assignment here, an assignment there all over the country. He told himself it wasn’t practical to set up a base residence he’d hardly ever be in. Actually, he liked living this way, most of the time. He thought of himself as in tune with one of the major lessons he’d learned about living in general: nothing lasts very long and you’re smart to have a bag half packed and ready for takeoff the minute things fall through. He’d had that bag in his closet for the past five years.

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nbsp; He was saving up a nest egg, too, though he hadn’t yet decided exactly what for. The great escape maybe. Someday he’d cut loose from even the spindly roots he had now and kick back someplace where it was warm forever and he didn’t speak the language. That way he wouldn’t be tempted to tell any of the too many secrets he knew about too many people. Or, maybe what he’d been building up was a cushion thick enough to keep from mangling any limbs when everything finally fell through for good and he came plummeting down. He figured it was mostly the cushion he had in mind. Besides, he was one hundred percent Scot. He carried caution in his bones.

  When Nick was in Manhattan, he stayed at the Tivoli Hotel on Mercer Street in Soho. He preferred to go back to the same place in each city he frequented. This small illusion of belonging somewhere saved him from having to think of himself as totally on the drift. He usually chose a hotel like this one, with character and plenty of street life around the neighborhood. Maybe the Tivoli was his version of a hometown. This would be the second Christmas in a row he’d spent here. Last year there’d been a card slipped under his door on Christmas Eve with a peace dove on the front and “Happy Holidays from the Management” printed in red foil letters on the inside. All of the staff had signed, even the day maids. A couple of them wrote brief, semipersonal messages along with their names. Mindy, the night clerk, wrote something more personal than semi, but he’d ignored it. He didn’t intend to mess up the comfortable thing he had going here by getting involved with somebody on staff. He might still have that card tucked into one of the handy, pack rat pockets of his bag in the closet. Something kept him from throwing it out. In general, however, his attitude was that holidays didn’t have much to do with him. They were about family, and he didn’t really have one.