“I remember. Did you tell her about your letter?”
“Yes.”
“She hasn’t gotten anything similar?”
Liz shook her head.
“I’ve got some bad news,” Detective Montgomery said. “We found another dead body this morning. Right outside of this very hotel. He’d been shot. Up until a few weeks ago, he’d been a cook for Mirandez.”
“Mirandez has a cook?”
He leaned his mouth closer to her ear, and she felt the shiver run down the length of her spine. “Not like Oprah has a cook. A cook is the guy who boils down the cocaine into crack.”
“Oh. My.”
“People keep dying,” he said. “It’s my job to make it stop. If Mary knows something, it’s her job to help me.”
She’d been wrong. He wasn’t like a dog after a bone. He wanted fresh meat. She pulled away from him, forcing the dancing to stop. She couldn’t think when he had his arms around her, let alone when his mouth was that close. “If you had enough to arrest her,” she protested, “you’d have done it yesterday. You don’t have anything but a wild guess.”
He had more than that. The tip had come from one of their own. It had taken Fluentes two years to work his way inside. Sawyer didn’t intend to sacrifice him now.
Push the counselor. He could hear Lieutenant Fischer’s words almost as clearly as if the man stood behind him. “She was there. And you need to convince her to tell us what she saw. She needs to tell us everything. Then we’ll protect her.”
“You’ll protect her?”
“Yeah.” For some reason Liz’s disbelieving tone set Sawyer’s teeth on edge. “That’s what we do. We’re cops.”
“She’s eight months pregnant.”
“I’m aware of that. We would arrange for both her and her baby to have the medical care that they need.”
“And then what?” she asked, her tone demanding.
Sawyer threw up his hands. “I don’t know. I guess the baby grows up, and in twenty years, Mary’s a grandmother.” Sawyer rubbed the bridge of his nose. His head pounded, and the damn drums weren’t helping. “Look, can we go outside?” he mumbled.
She seemed to hesitate. Sawyer let out a breath when she nodded and took off, weaving in and out of the dancers, not stopping until she reached the exit. They walked outside the hotel, and he led her far enough away that the doorman couldn’t hear the conversation.
She spoke before he had the chance to question her. “I’ll talk to her. She’s supposed to come to OCM at eight tomorrow morning. It’s her regular appointment.”
“And you’ll convince her to talk to us?”
“I’ll talk—”
“Liz, Liz. Back here. What are you doing outside?”
Sawyer turned back toward the hotel door. Her date stood next to the doorman, wildly waving his arm. The man started walking toward them, his long legs eating up the distance.
“He doesn’t know about my letter,” Liz said, her voice almost a whisper. “I’d like to keep it that way.”
When the man reached Liz’s side, he wrapped a skinny arm around her and tugged her toward his body. For some crazy reason, Sawyer wanted to break the man’s arm. In two, maybe three, places. Then maybe a kneecap next.
“You had me worried when I couldn’t find you,” he said.
She stepped out of the man’s grasp. “Detective Montgomery is the detective assigned to the shooting at OCM.” She turned back to Sawyer. “Detective Montgomery, Howard Fraypish,” she said, finishing the introduction.
The guy stuck his arm out, and Sawyer returned the shake. “I’m OCM’s attorney,” Fraypish said.
The man’s hot-pink bow tie matched his cummerbund. “I better get going,” Sawyer said. “Thanks for the information, Ms. Mayfield.”
“I certainly hope you arrest the men responsible for the attack at OCM,” Fraypish said. “Where were the city’s finest when this happened? At the local doughnut shop?”
Was that the best the guy could do? “I don’t like doughnuts,” Sawyer said.
“Are you sure you’re a cop?”
Liz Mayfield frowned at her date. The idiot held up both hands in mock surrender. “Just a little joke. I thought we could use some humor.”
Sawyer thought a quick left followed by a sharp right would be kind of funny.
“I should have called you, Detective. Then you wouldn’t have had to make a trip here,” she apologized.
“Forget it.” His only regret was the blue dress. He knew how good she looked in it. He wondered how long before he stopped thinking about how good she’d look without it.
LIZ WOKE UP at four in the morning. Her body needed rest, but her mind refused to cooperate. She’d left the hotel shortly after midnight. She’d been in her apartment and in bed less than ten minutes later. She’d dreamed about Mary. Sweet Mary and her baby. Sweet Mary and the faceless Dantel Mirandez. Jenny had been there, too. With her crooked smile, her flyaway blond hair blowing around her as she threw a handful of pennies into the fountain at Grant Park. Just the way she’d been the last day Liz had seen her alive. Then out of nowhere, there’d been more letters, more threats. So many that when she’d fallen down and they’d piled on top of her, they’d covered her. And she hadn’t been able to breathe.
Waking up had been a relief.
She showered, put on white capri pants and a blue shirt and caught the five-o’clock bus. Thirty minutes later, it dropped her off a block from OCM. The morning air was heavy with humidity. It had the makings of another ninetydegree day.
She entered the security code, unlocked the front door, entered and then reset the code. She didn’t bother to go downstairs to her office, heading instead to the small kitchen at the rear of the first floor. She started a pot of coffee, pouring a cup before the pot was even half-full. She took a sip, burned her tongue and swallowed anyway. She needed caffeine.
While she waited for her bagel to toast, she thought about Detective Montgomery. When he’d walked away, in the wake of Howard’s insults, she’d wanted to run after him, to apologize, to make him understand that she’d do what she could to help him.
As long as it didn’t put Mary in any danger.
But she hadn’t. When Howard had hustled her back inside the hotel, she’d gone without protest. Jamison had made it abundantly clear. Attendees had coughed up two hundred bucks a plate. If they wanted to dance, you danced. If they needed a drink, you fetched it. If they wanted conversation, you talked.
Liz had danced, fetched, talked and smiled through it all. Even after her toes had been stepped on for the eighteenth time. No politician could have done better. She’d done it on autopilot. It hadn’t helped when Carmen had come up, fanning herself, and said, “Who was that?”
“Detective Montgomery,” Liz had explained.
“I suspect I don’t have to state the obvious,” Carmen had said, “but the man is hot.”
Liz had almost laughed. Carmen hadn’t even heard the man talk. Or felt the man’s chest muscles when he’d held her close—not too close but close enough. She hadn’t smelled his clean, fresh scent.
Detective Montgomery wasn’t just hot; he was smoking hot.
Her bagel popped just as she heard the front door open. She relaxed when she didn’t hear the alarm. Who else, she wondered, was crazy enough to come to work