How in God’s name had she ever talked herself into this crazy plan in the first place? Maybe O’Dell was right. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for this kind of work. Maybe she should just—
“I just wish I knew if Honey was okay,” he fretted. “Maybe I should call her just to—”
“No!” Meg winced and lowered her voice. “Reggie, just one phone call could be enough to jeopardize her life. She’s safe with my brother—the guy’s a cop, for crying out loud. One of Chicago’s finest. No one will get close to her, I promise you that.” The promise sounded thin to Meg’s ears, and she prayed she wasn’t lying.
When she’d thought up this lunatic scheme, she’d never given Reggie’s pretty young wife much thought. Hadn’t given Reggie much thought, for that matter. But now, after two weeks, he was more than just a name on a computer screen. He was flesh and blood, and he was scared. And he trusted her. That was the hardest part.
“You said if I gave O’Dell enough information to bring down not just Tony and the Vegas setup, but Gus Stepino’s entire Atlantic City operation, he’d give me whatever I wanted. That he’d put Honey and me into witness protection and get us new lives. Maybe even hire me. You said—”
“I said maybe on the job,” Meg muttered, squirming a little. What had she been thinking, telling him something like that? She’d been frantic to get him to go with her, to believe her, to trust her…and she’d told him whatever he’d wanted to hear. “Reggie, I just said maybe on the job, remember. I’m not sure, with your record and all, that…well, that my boss can hire you.”
Another lie. Spence O’Dell could hire anyone he damn well pleased, running his mysterious agency seemingly unencumbered by rules or other government meddling. The fact that Reggie had a history of—and a record for—fraud and embezzlement and an assortment of other vagaries didn’t come into it at all. Heaven knows, O’Dell had worse working for him.
Her, for instance.
Just the thought nearly made her laugh out loud.
“Twelve more minutes,” she said firmly. “If he’s not here by two-thirty-two on the dot, we’re leaving.” To her surprise, he nodded glumly, seemingly impressed by the take-charge authority in her voice.
She looked around the bar again, wondering if the man Tony had sent after them was already here, watching them like a fox watching chickens. The bikers in the far corner had worried her at first, but they seemed oblivious to everyone around them, and she decided finally that they wouldn’t be Tony’s style. The harried-looking salesman didn’t look like much of a threat. He was trying to eat a roast beef sandwich and drink beer and work a calculator and fill in a bunch of forms at the same time, dripping mustard on whatever he was working on. She gave the two farmers a long, hard look, but they didn’t look like hired assassins. Nor did the two Native kids playing pool amid much hooting and laughter and good-natured jostling. That left the bartender—who didn’t look like someone she’d want to tangle with at the best of times—and the man asleep at the table in the back.
Her heart had nearly stopped when she’d spotted him back there in the shadows. He was tall and wide-shouldered and looked like someone who knew trouble on a first name basis, unmistakably Native with strong, clean-cut features and black hair cut almost severely short. It was his worn leather jacket that had worried her. It was all wrong in this heat and she’d eyed it suspiciously, wondering what kind of weaponry it hid.
But he’d paid no attention to them, and after a couple of minutes she realized he was too drunk to be a threat to anyone except himself. He was lying across the table, head in a puddle of spilled beer, arms thrown out as though to keep the table from spinning off into space. And for half an instant she almost envied him his complete lack of concern about present, past or future. Especially the future.
Hers seemed to be getting shorter by the minute.
Trying not to fidget, she looked at her watch. “Five more minutes, Reggie.”
“He’ll be here,” he said stubbornly. “You said you’d do this my way if I agreed to come back to Washington with you, remember?”
“And I told you if you didn’t come back with me voluntarily, you’d come back in handcuffs.” Meg gave him a look she hoped was hard and unforgiving. “My people gave you five thousand dollars on the understanding that you’d bring us the information. And you disappeared, Reggie. With the money. My boss is not a happy man.”
“I told you I was coming in,” he muttered, not quite meeting her eyes. “But I had to make sure Honey was safe first. I—”
“You were making a run for it,” Meg said shortly. “You had two tickets for Rome in your pocket, Reggie. Not one. Two. I haven’t told O’Dell that, because if he finds out you tried to run out on him, he’ll kill you himself and save Tony the trouble. I’m giving you the deal of your life, and you know it.” Meg gave him her best government-agent glare, not seeing the need to tell him that she hadn’t told O’Dell about the tickets because O’Dell didn’t know she was here. Didn’t know Reggie was here, either. Didn’t know about any of it, in fact.
O’Dell thought she was on vacation. In England. Sightseeing. O’Dell did not know she was sitting in a smoky bar in the middle of God Knew Where, North Dakota—or maybe it was South Dakota, she was so turned around—with Reggie Dawes more or less in custody, waiting for delivery of a computer disk containing enough information to bring down one of the best-connected mobs on the Eastern Seaboard.
O’Dell was going to kill her.
If one of Tony’s people didn’t get to her first. If Gus Stepino—Tony’s none-too-patient boss in Atlantic City—hadn’t found out what was going on and killed her before that. She was going to have to start handing out numbers, she thought a little wildly.
The thought made her swallow hard. “Okay, Reggie. Time’s up. We—”
“Excuse me, miss, but you wouldn’t happen to have a sister in La Jolla, would you?”
Meg blinked. The salesman had appeared beside the table with no warning at all and was smiling down at her. It was a pleasant, open smile, set in a pleasant, open face, and he had sandy hair and freckles and his eyes were an unremarkable—but pleasant—shade of blue.
“I…what?” She stared up at him, wondering what on earth he was talking about. “La Jolla?”
“Sounds like a bad pickup line, I know,” he said with an ingenuous grin, “but I swear you look just like a girl I used to date when I lived in—”
“Hey, anybody gotta match?”
How the man in the leather jacket had gotten from his table to theirs so quickly and silently when he was so drunk, Meg had no idea, but here he was, grinning benignly and a little vaguely at them all. He took an unsteady side step, as though the floor had moved under his feet, and lurched into the salesman, who stepped away with an exclamation of disgust.
“I don’t smoke,” the salesman said sharply. “Go on back to your table and stop bothering people.”
“Not botherin’ anyone,” the other man said in a soft slur, grinning down at Meg. “I jus’ wanna smoke.” He held out a cigarette. “Wanna cig’rette?”
“No, thank you,” Meg said quietly. “I don’t smoke.”
He looked perplexed. “Y’don’t? How come?”
Meg had to smile. “Can’t afford matches.”
He looked at her for a moment, then gave a snort of laughter.
“Buzz off!” The salesman knocked the man’s hand and the proffered cigarette away from Meg. “She doesn’t want a cigarette, and she doesn’t want to be bothered by some drunk.”
“Not botherin’ her,” the man said with mild indignation.
“Look, you, I’m going to—”
“He’s