Ace Is Wild (21 page)

A few more seconds passed, or maybe an hour, and Vivi jerked her arms out of his grip and turned away. She was still struggling to catch her breath—so was Daniel—and neither of them spoke until they comfortably could. And even then they didn’t look at each other.

“We’ll start researching the wins first,” he said, eyes trained on the street below their third-floor flophouse. “We can’t go to jail and interview these guys, so we’ll have to do some research first, look up known associates, family members, anyone who might be willing to talk to me.”

“You mean us.”

“I mean, you’ll be doing your thing from the car.”

She stomped over and jerked him around. “Let’s get something straight. I don’t take orders from you,” she said, full of frustration and taking it out on him.

And better this way than the other, he told himself. Anger was so much less complicated than sex. “I’m in charge, that’s nonnegotiable. You play this my way or you don’t play at all.”

“I know you think I’m a kook, but I’m not playing a game, Daniel.” She turned and walked, as quietly as she’d spoken, back to the table, pulled the legal pad and the laptop over, and began to surf the Web.

There didn’t seem to be any way to respond, so Daniel let it go. He had a feeling he’d be doing a lot of that where Vivi was concerned.

Chapter 14

MORNING CAME EARLY. VIVI WOKE UP WISHING
she could say the same about herself. They’d started the night on separate sides of the mattress, but they’d ended up plastered together, Daniel wrapped around her like a blanket. An electric blanket. With bare wiring that made her skin tingle, her nerves buzz, and parts of her get way too hot. She shifted, restless, not intentionally rubbing against Daniel, but she liked the feel of his long, hard body.

His hands clamped around her hips. “Don’t do that again,” he rumbled in her ear.

The feel of his warm breath made her shiver. So did the tone of his voice—for different reasons. The spike of lust and the little thrill of fear might have combined to overpower her better intentions. He didn’t stick around long enough for her to find out.

Vivi stayed where she was until Daniel disappeared into the bathroom. And then she did a lot of thinking. The thinking started out being about Daniel, but that was counterproductive to the whole thought process so she tabled Daniel, except in that the rest of the list related to him because he was the reason she was neck deep in hit men.

Her life was on the line, too, now, and if Sappresi was behind the contract, all he had to do was wait for her to step back into her routine and have her killed then. Because Sappresi knew right where to find her. And Sappresi had every reason to want her dead.

Back when her grandmother was still alive, and Vivi had just begun to take over the business, Tony had been one of her first clients, and he’d remained her best, until the day she discovered who he really was. And what he was using her predictions for.

Including the murder of an FBI agent.

She’d been the stupid one, naïve, wanting to believe in the basic goodness of everyone. So when she’d told Tony that a friend of his would betray him, and when she’d described the face of that friend, she’d never for one second guessed where that prediction would lead. Until she’d seen it for herself.

She’d lied to Daniel when she told him his murder was the first vision she’d had. Tom Zukey, the FBI agent Sappresi had ordered killed, had been the first. She hadn’t understood what was happening then, though, and she’d written it off as a particularly vile nightmare. Until the next time Tony came in and she’d seen the truth of it on his face.

She’d refused to counsel him anymore after that, but Tony didn’t go away without argument. So she’d used his superstition against him without a second thought. Tony believed in what she did, and he believed that harming her would turn the harm back on him. She’d made sure of it.

There’d been nothing she could do about Tom Zukey, though. Established law enforcement was notoriously resistant to help from psychics. Nothing would have been gained by going to the Boston P.D. or the FBI, except to sign her own death warrant if Sappresi found out about it. It made her sick to let him just walk away, but not as sick as knowing she’d helped him commit murder. True, she hadn’t put the bullets in Zukey with her own hand, but she’d laid the groundwork. That made her just as guilty.

Daniel would surely see it that way, if he found out about it. She intended to do whatever it took to prevent that for as long as possible.

He came out of the bathroom, freshly shaven, his T-shirt and jeans comfortably worn and leaving nothing to the imagination. No saggy, homeboy pants for Daniel.

Vivi hightailed it into the bathroom and slammed the door before her thought processes clogged up with hormonal urges. By the time she’d brushed and washed and dressed, Daniel was waiting for her, everything he’d brought packed into his duffel. Probably didn’t want Eric snooping. Vivi left her things there. It was no matter to her if Eric wanted to dig through them. All she’d brought was clothes, and Eric wasn’t a pervert, he was a pain in the ass. Eric’s only interest in a woman’s clothing was in how fast he could get them off her.

RUDY MANETTI LIVED A COUPLE MILES AWAY, IN A building similar to Eric’s. Rudy’s building hadn’t been rehabbed yet; it was still apartments. The mailbox at the front, communal entry said Rudy lived in 1A. Daniel and Vivi walked in from the alley entrance off the side street, counting off buildings and windows until they came to Rudy’s apartment. Or, more accurately, Rudy’s privacy fence, eight-feet tall, weathered wood, peek proof.

“It’s locked,” Daniel said after peering through the crack at the gate opening, “but not padlocked. I’ll boost you over and you can open it for me.”

Vivi didn’t have a good feeling about the boosting program, but she didn’t have a good feeling about any of this, and time was wasting. Daniel bent over and linked his fingers together, Vivi put her foot in the obvious place, and Daniel stood and lifted at the same time. The result was closer to a catapult than a boost. She went over the fence, but the landing wasn’t pretty. The landing was five points—feet, hands, and ass—and she figured she was lucky it hadn’t been her face.

“You okay?”

Vivi unlatched the gate and pulled it open. She chose to let her expression and the fact that she was rubbing her backside serve as an answer to his question.

Daniel didn’t seem in the least repentant. Probably the smile on his face. “You go first,” Vivi said, stepping back and gesturing him ahead of her.

Daniel stayed where he was, taking a moment to get his bearings. Rudy’s apartment occupied one side of the building, and since it was the ground floor, he had a small back-yard that was completely fenced off from the other side of the building. The reason for the fence escaped him. The yard was completely empty, no furniture, no flowers, no lawn equipment, which made sense because there was no lawn, just hard-packed dirt with some scrubby weeds.

Daniel went to the back door and tried the knob. “Locked,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at Vivi.

“I opened the last one,” she said.

“I’m a little out of practice.”

“Break a windowpane out of the door, reach in, and unlock it.”

“I was hoping we could get in without leaving tracks.”

“He won’t know it’s us unless we stand here arguing about how to get in long enough for one of his neighbors to see us.”

“There’s a doggie door,” Daniel said.

Vivi took a step back, her hands going to her hips. “You did not just suggest I crawl through a doggie door.”

“I was only making an observation,” Daniel said. “But now that you mention it, that’s not a bad idea.”

“No way. Absolutely not.”

“You’re small, you’ll fit.”

“If there’s a doggie door, there’s a dog. I don’t want my face eaten off because you won’t break a window. I like my face.”

Daniel stared at her a second or two, the muscles in his jaw bunching. Then he hunkered down and pushed aside the rubber flap covering the opening. Vivi leaned in as close as she dared, looking over his shoulder, but she didn’t see anything. Daniel dropped to his knees and stuck his head through the opening, taking a moment to study whatever was on the other side before he pulled back and stood up.

“There’s a cat,” he said. “Right up your alley.”

Vivi rolled her eyes. “I’m not a witch.”

“Semantics.”

“Witches cast spells and perform rituals. Witches dance naked at the full moon. I don’t do any of that stuff.”

Daniel looked like he was stuck on the naked moon dancing. Hell, Daniel looked like he was undressing her with his eyes. If he kept staring at her like that, she might perform that task herself. And she wouldn’t stop at her own clothes. “Fine,” she said, squatting down on the top step and assessing the opening, about fifteen inches square. “I don’t think I’ll fit.”

“You’ll fit,” Daniel said, sounding impatient.

Vivi took a deep breath, went down to her hands and knees, braced herself for trouble, and stuck her head past the rubber flap. Sure enough, there was a tabby cat sitting by the leg of a small dining table, watching her, tail lazily sweeping the floor.

Aside from the cat, the kitchen was about what she’d expected. Varnished cabinets, worn linoleum floor, fixtures from the sixties and, hello, decorated in Coca-Cola? She blinked a couple times but unfortunately her eyes weren’t deceiving her. Coke trays hung on the walls, red-checkered Coke cloth covered the table and hung at the windows, Coke clock on the wall. Coke tchotchkes everywhere. Probably an old girlfriend with a coke addiction. And really bad taste in men.

Or maybe the dog had chased her off.

Vivi shot backward, winding up on her backside at Daniel’s feet. “Shit. There’s a dog,” she said, looking up at him. “A big dog.”

“You still have your face.”

“And you’re not in a fetal position, but that could change,” she said, her eyes dropping to a vulnerable part of his anatomy. “Especially if you try to make me to stick my head in there again.”

“If the dog wanted to eat your face off he’d come out the doggie door,” Daniel said.

Vivi scrambled around behind him.

“Interesting,” Daniel said. “You didn’t think twice about crashing your truck through my house, or jumping off the roof of your building, but you can’t handle a dog that isn’t even threatening enough to bark.”

“Easy for you to say, you’re not the one about to end your life as a chew toy.” But she scooted around to the doggie door again, and all right, she knew Daniel was psyching her into it, but she’d be damned if she let a dog get the better of her after she’d faced down armed hit men.

She stuck her head back into Coke Central and found the cat still lying by the table leg, still staring and swishing. And warm, stinky doggie breath washed over the side of her face. She froze, just her eyes sliding in that direction, and there was an open, panting dog mouth with big yellow teeth. A moist dog nose was above the mouth, and just behind that were a couple of dog eyes in a dog head attached to a large dog body.

“Hey, there,” she said, going for nonaggressive. Come to think of it, eyeballing a dog was supposed to be a challenge. She switched her gaze to the cat and swore it rolled its eyes at her. “Sorry,” she said to any animal that might have taken offense.

The cat started to wash its paws, and a huge dog tongue swiped up the side of her face. Several times. That tongue covered a lot of territory. If she’d been a Tootsie Pop, she’d have been down to the Tootsie Roll center in no time.

“What’s going on?” Daniel called from the other side of the door, his voice sounding strained. “Why aren’t you going inside?”

“Keep your pants on, Ace.”

He muttered something she couldn’t make out. Judging from the raspy quality of his voice, she decided that was a good thing. And she probably shouldn’t push her luck any further.

She eased her arms and shoulders through the opening and inched forward past her waist before coming up short. She twisted, dipped one hip, then the other, and tried to wiggle them through, but her hips exceeded the doggie door limit.

“What the hell are you doing?” Daniel wanted to know. He still sounded raspy and strained, and she suspected it wasn’t impatience. She suspected he was staring at her ass. Parts of her that shouldn’t be went all warm and tingly, and the prevailing urge was to back out of the doggie door. And not because of the dog.

“I’m not getting any younger,” Daniel said.