Ace Is Wild (11 page)

It took a lot of disgustingly peppy thinking, and one of her stronger impulses to get her to the front door. Once she got that far she had to go inside because standing there trapped in paranoia made her look like a criminal. Feeling like a criminal was bad enough, no point in advertising it.

She didn’t know about the Jacuzzis, but the place was a sea of marble, and a beehive of activity. By the time she got to Daniel’s office, she was having trouble breathing. Being in a place bulging at the seams with cops and judges and people who had the power to put her in a ten-by-ten room with a stainless steel toilet and a closed-circuit surveillance system did that to her. But his assistant showed her in, and Daniel put her at ease immediately by getting right to the interrogation.

“How did you ditch the agents at your place?” he wanted to know.

“I walked right out the front door.”

“Somehow they missed that.”

She shrugged. “People usually see what they expect to see. Especially men.”

“They didn’t see anything. How did you get past them?”

“I read people, remember? Do you really think staring at the front of my building for hours on end didn’t put your agents into a stupor at some point? Combine that with heavy foot traffic and it was child’s play.”

Daniel sat back in his chair, clearly pissed off. Well, so was she, and they hadn’t even gotten to the important stuff yet. “Are you always this pigheaded?”

“How did you know about the hit last night?” he oinked. “And keep it on the physical plane.”

“Funny, I was just thinking that.”

“Who. Told. You?”

“Why do you keep asking that question when you already know you’re not going to like the answer? And does it really matter?”

“It matters when a complete stranger saves your life.”

“Why? If you knew someone was going to die, wouldn’t you try to do something about it?”

“If you’re some kind of psychic superhero who goes around warning people when they’re about to get hit by a bus or eat bad shellfish, why haven’t I heard about you before?”

“This isn’t normal.”

“You’re telling me.”

“For me,” Vivi qualified, looking him square in the eyes. “This isn’t normal for me. In fact, this is the first time something like this has happened.”

“So why do I get the feeling you’re hiding something?” Vivi swallowed back a denial. “You don’t believe in feelings.”

“I don’t believe in ESP, clairvoyance, psychic visions, or spirit guides,” Daniel countered. “There is no sixth sense, nobody’s talking in your head except your alternate personalities, and there’s nothing on the ‘other side.’ Nobody comes back to suck blood, give advice, or knock on the roof of your car along deserted dirt roads. When you’re dead, you’re dead.”

“Sometimes people don’t get that,” Vivi said, “and you can’t tell me every action you take is backed by cold, hard proof. Don’t you ever do something because of a hunch?”

“Hunches are just educated guesses, the kind of instinct that comes from time on the job.”

“Going with your gut.”

Daniel bumped up a shoulder by way of agreement.

“And your gut tells you I’m lying?”

“Holding back. You saw the two gunmen. What did they look like?”

“Dark hair, average build—”

“Dark hair and dark skin? Like Italian?”

“I wasn’t trying to identify their ethnic background,” Vivi said, taking to her feet. Moving always helped her work through stress, and remembering last night’s events was definitely stressful. “I saw them coming so I tried to get your attention. You couldn’t hear me yelling over the crowd noise, but your girlfriend did.”

“Stop—”

“Calling her your girlfriend, I got it, Ace.”

“And stop finishing my sentences,” Daniel grumbled. “And stop calling me Ace. It’s irritating.”

“Everything irritates you. Not a great personality trait for a prosecutor. You really ought to work on it.” One look at his face told her exactly what he thought of that idea. “Look, I saw them coming through the crowd, and I yelled for you, but you were busy playing Big Shot with the fire chief. I managed to get your date’s attention,” Vivi did the same thing she’d done the night before, pantomiming a gun with her hand, “but instead of cluing you in to your imminent death your girl— Patrice tried to drag you to the ground, which kept you from getting shot. But not her.”

Daniel sent her another look, and she realized she didn’t exactly sound sympathetic. “I’m relieved she’s not dead.”

“But it’s her own fault she was wounded.”

“It was the hit man’s fault,” Vivi said like she was talking to a particularly dense two-year-old. “But Patrice might have avoided it.”

“I guess she’s not as good at thinking in a crisis as you are.”

“True.”

“Not that you’re all that good, since it didn’t occur to you to yell ‘gun’ or call the cops.”

“The cops were already there,” Vivi pointed out, “and if I’d yelled gun in that crowd, the hit men wouldn’t have had the only weapons we’d have needed to worry about.”

She was right, and Daniel hated that she was right.

“Look,” she said, slapping both hands on his desk and leaning halfway across to make her point, “everything happened so fast, and all I could think about was keeping you in one piece.”

“I’m flattered.” He’d aimed for sarcasm, but he missed. It might have ticked him off more if he weren’t approaching spontaneous human combustion.

She was wearing one of those tight little tanks over a pair of low-rise jeans, and since she was still leaning over his desk, there was skin everywhere. Really nice, smooth skin over really nice, rounded curves. One of those curves was adorned with an orchid, pale pink and lavender with pale green leaves twining down, disappearing into fantasy-land.

It took real effort to drag his gaze off the greenery. Their eyes met, and she shoved away from his desk, which might have helped if he hadn’t immediately honed in on the tattoo at the small of her back. He’d seen it when she was pacing, but he’d been running on anger then, and anger was strong enough to cancel out lust.

The anger was gone, though, and the tattoo was right there in his face, disappearing below the waistband of her jeans and taking his brains along with it. It was some sort of spiritual thing he couldn’t identify because he only caught the twin tips of angel wings. Wondering what the rest of it looked like drove him even crazier, like a mystery wrapped in a puzzle, surrounded by . . . Okay, the metaphor had disappeared behind a testosterone haze. There wasn’t anywhere he could focus that didn’t wreak havoc on his concentration, and when she turned around and his brain did kick back in, he didn’t particularly like the thought that came to mind because what came to mind was the possibility that she
was
innocent. And if she was innocent, then she must be telling the truth.

And if he believed that, there was no point in getting his head examined because the diagnosis would be terminal stupidity.

“How the hell did you get mixed up in this?” He didn’t even realize he’d said it out loud until she answered.

“I have no idea what I’m mixed up in,” she said, dropping into the chair across from his desk once more. “You’re the target. I just hijacked the signal off the cosmic telegraph.”

“Cosmic telegraph?”

She grinned and it him right between the eyes, her beauty, her playfulness, her sincerity. His gullibility, if he fell for any of that.

“I thought you’d like that,” she said. “And it’ll save me from hearing some sarcastic future version from you.”

“Translation: You’re going to keep stalking me.”

“As long as I can ditch your agents.”

Daniel took a minute to find some patience. He didn’t know why he’d expected this to go differently. Must have been delusional. Or optimistic, which was so much worse. He wasn’t even sure, at the moment, of his ability to keep his hands off her, if they had to spend any time together. And this time he was picturing them around her neck.

“So who do you think is trying to kill you?”

It took him another moment to process the change of subject, and by then she’d managed to become irritating again.

“I’d’ve expected you to put some thought into this by now,” she said. “Maybe it’s Anthony Sappresi. Maybe it’s his nephew, that asinine reporter who was so angry you were prosecuting Tony. Or that Irish guy you ran into last night.”

He sat back, hands steepled, studying her.

“Mount Rushmore,” she mumbled with a sigh. But her eyes were sparkling.