kill for a big, tall glass of iced tea,” she said, trying not to whine, but following up her words with a pathetic little moan she couldn’t suppress. “I guess you just forgot to bring anything to drink, huh?”
“I didn’t forget,” he said, still staring at the garage.
Laura immediately perked up. “Oh. You brought something, then?”
“No.”
“But you said…”
“I said I didn’t forget.” His gaze cut toward her briefly before returning to the garage where the suspects’ cars, a big silver boat of a Cadillac and a spiffy little red Toyota, were parked affectionately side by side. The vehicles hadn’t moved, Laura noted glumly. Nor had the garage. Nor Sam.
What a crummy, boring occupation. She was seriously beginning to wonder if she’d made a mistake choosing Zachary, S. U. to protect her. In spite of his incredibly muscular build and sensational tan, he didn’t strike her as a man of action exactly, or as all that smart and well prepared. If he had known they’d be spending half the night on a red-hot rooftop, why in heaven’s name hadn’t he at least thought to bring along something to drink? Even a thermos of lukewarm coffee or hot chocolate didn’t sound half bad at the moment. A dented canteen with one swallow of anything wet.
“Pretty stupid, if you ask me,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Not bringing anything to drink.”
“No. Actually it’s pretty smart,” he said calmly. “You don’t see any bathroom facilities around here, do you?”
She glanced around the bleak rooftop. “No. No facilities whatsoever. Just half an acre of tar bubbles and broken glass.”
“Well, there you go.” He glanced at his watch. “It shouldn’t be too much longer now. We’ll stop on the way home for something.”
“Mm.” She had a vision of a foot tall glass of iced tea with a huge wedge of lemon stuck to its rim. “Be still my heart. I think I could drink a gallon of anything wet with ice cubes floating…”
“Shh.” Sam cut off her liquid reverie with an abrupt hiss. And when Laura started to speak again, he growled, “Quiet. Somebody’s coming.”
As soon as he said that, Laura could hear the insistent bass of a boom box coming from the direction of the stairs. The noise became louder and louder until Laura could feel the rap music beginning to beat in her brain like a headache. Then the door to the rooftop opened, and two dark figures emerged.
Boys, she thought with a quick, small measure of relief. They were just kids. But as they sauntered closer, even in the dark Laura could see that both boys were decked in the obligatory ripped T-shirts, baggy, low-slung pants and turned-around baseball caps of the Devil’s Own, one of the worst street gangs in the city. Worst as in cutthroat dangerous.
“Sorry, fellas,” Sam called out above the harsh beat of the boom box. “This roof’s occupied.”
The boys stopped. So did the music. The sudden silence almost made Laura dizzy.
“Occupied,” the taller one said to his companion. “Occupied.” He set the boom box down with exquisite care. “Maybe this man don’t know what part of town he’s occupying, Jerome.”
“Damn straight,” Jerome said gruffly as he jabbed a finger toward Sam and Laura. “This is our roof, man. We the Devil’s Own.”
They were also higher than any rooftop was ever going to get them, Laura noticed now from their slurred speech and unsteady stances. Their gazes, however, seemed to focus fairly steadily and unfortunately on her.
“Yo, mama,” the tall, lanky one purred, smiling almost viciously as he took several easy steps in her direction. “Why don’t you tell your old man there to take a hike for a little bitty while?”
She started to answer when Sam grasped her knee and said, “Just be quiet, Laura. Let me take care of this.”
“Low-ra.” Jerome turned the bill of his cap to the side, cocked his head, and grinned. Moonlight glittered on one big gold tooth. “You’re one fine lady, Low-ra. Tell that sad-ass man of yours you want to stay here on that blanket with Swat and me. What do you say, Low-ra?”
She was tempted to say that she was a special friend of the Hammer’s baby boy and if anything happened to her, they’d find themselves in a hundred various pieces scattered in dumpsters and vacant lots all over the city. Only her throat was so dry, all she could manage was to croak to Sam, “Don’t you have a gun or something?”
“They’re just kids,” Sam said quietly. “I’m not going to pull a gun on kids.”
But even as he was speaking, it seemed that the kids, Jerome and Swat, had decided they were not at all reluctant to use their own lethal weapons. First Jerome’s long-bladed knife appeared from somewhere underneath his loose T-shirt. Then Swat’s knife materialized, almost from thin air.
“Go on now, man,” Jerome said, gesturing with the glinting blade. “We got some business with your lady.”
Sam muttered a curse under his breath, then slowly began to get up. Laura’s first thought was that he was going to do just what he’d been ordered to do, that he was going to walk away and leave her alone. Alone with the Devil’s Own for some business. Panic surged up in her throat.
“Sam! What are you doing?” She reached out, grabbing for his pant leg, but he pulled away.
“Okay, fellas,” he said. “Look, you really don’t want to do this. Now put the knives away, pick up your boom box, and get the hell out of here before this gets you both a couple of years in Bakerville.”
Laura felt her eyes rolling up in her head now, hardly believing what she’d just heard. These thugs were standing there with knives the size of machetes and Sam Zachary was threatening them with reform school! My God. At least he wasn’t still wearing his blue gingham apron!
She decided right then and there that, after she survived this night, if she survived, she was going to find herself a real private investigator. A he-man. A hero. One with a very big gun.
Jerome and Swat, it appeared, had the same impression of Sam’s abilities. They grinned at each other, traded knowing looks and began to move forward, one of them edging to the right and the other to the left.
“Two against one, man,” Swat said, shifting his weapon from hand to hand and moving closer. “You scared yet?”
Plenty, Laura thought. Spitless.
“Terrified,” Sam answered with a calmness that struck Laura as irrational, if not completely insane, under the circumstances.
Now the lanky Jerome started to make kissing noises. At least that’s what Laura assumed they were. She didn’t even want to know what the noises from Swat’s mouth signified. Oh, God. This is what she’d escaped rotten Artie Hammerman for?
She glanced frantically toward the low brick wall that edged the rooftop, wondering just how much damage a sixty-foot jump might incur, thinking absurdly that if this were a movie there would be a series of canvas awnings to slow her fall, not to mention a conveniently parked truck with a flatbed of straw or stacked mattresses to keep her from breaking every bone in her body.
But this wasn’t a movie and the two gang members were even closer to Sam now. One to the right, the other to the left. Close enough for Jerome to thrust out his blade in a wide, glittering and deadly arc.
What happened next took place so fast that Laura wasn’t even sure her eyes completely registered the events. Sam’s right arm shot out, deflecting the blade, then only a blink of an eye after that his left fist thundered into Jerome’s chin, sending the boy at least half a foot into the air, literally out of his shoes. The knife went sailing, hilt over blade, into the moonlit sky, and before either Jerome or his weapon even had a chance to land, Sam’s