Material Witness (3 page)

“Friend of yours?” he asked.

She snapped her attention back to him
like a rabbit caught in a snare. “No. Yours?”

“You ask too many questions, CJ. You
never know whose toes you're stepping on.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

She lifted her soda to her lips again
and took a sip. Then another. Jake's eyes lingered where the glass had been,
then to the mark her lips had left on the sweat-lined glass.

“Who is he?” she asked, going against
his warning.

How could she be here like this and
not know Ritchie Trumbella? Why on earth was she here at all?

He owns Rory's.”

Ritchie Trumbella owned a whole lot
of other shady dealings, too. But if CJ didn't know this legitimate one, it was
doubtful she knew anything at all about his non-paper dealings.

Taking her by the arm, he said,
“Let's get out of here.”

CJ's dark eyes grew impossibly wide
and her mouth dropped open. Her slender body lifted high on the barstool and
went statue stiff. For a minute, Jake thought she'd actually stopped breathing.

* * *

Cassie sat paralyzed on the barstool,
blinking hard as the shock caused by the man in front of her set in. Sure,
talking to Mr. Cool Leather Jacket with the smoky blue eyes was fine but that
he was trying to pick her up… If she were sure she wouldn't fall off her heels,
she'd fly for the door. No matter how attracted she was to this man, there was
no way she was going to go that route if he'd been willing to be with a…

Death couldn't come too quick for
Maureen
.

“I think I've gathered enough…had
enough soda,” she said. The backs of her thighs were sticky from sweat and made
a squeaky sound as she helplessly slipped off the stool while trying to keep
her dress from riding up her thighs.

Jake stood next to her, his hand
still gripping her upper arm. Her body tightened with the physical contact. He
smelled of leather, a hint of the beer he'd just consumed, and something else.
It wasn’t the cheap, heavy cologne so many men wore. He smelled musky, very
male, erotically appealing.

“What are you doing?” she demanded,
trying to pull free.

“It's a good idea I take you out of
here.”

“That's not necessary,” she insisted.

“No trouble.”

“It is to me.”

“I just want to make sure you get
safely to your car.”

“I didn't drive,” she blurted out
when his grip on her arm grew tighter.

Brilliant, Cassie.
So much for a quick getaway. She
could have kicked herself for throwing him the advantage. She would have if she
were sure her dress would stay firmly in place.

But Jake's reaction was suddenly
different from what she'd expected. His dark eyebrows drew into a tight knot on
his forehead. He glanced away and dragged his fingers over a head of course
dark hair, letting his hand rest on the nape of his neck. She damned herself
for wanting to lose her fingers in his hair. Three years since she had a decent
relationship and her body picked now, of all times, to come back to life.

“Please tell me you weren't planning
on walking home in this neighborhood,” he said tightly.

She straightened her spine. “Of
course not. What do you take me for?”

He tossed her the most irresistible
wry grin. He didn't have to say a word for her to know what he was thinking.

“I’m not what you think.”

Another grin. This one was more
irresistible than the last. Her knees suddenly turned to rubber, making it
difficult to stand. She cinched her purse strap higher on her shoulder and
folded her arms across her chest.

Jake cocked his head to one side.
“And you're so sure you know what I'm thinking?”

“You think I'm something I'm not. And
I can assure you, I am definitely
not
.”

He had a full-blown smile now. One
with straight white teeth and a dimple on his left cheek she was sure wreaked
havoc with more women than her.

“You're not all that hard to figure
out, CJ.”

Indignation swelled inside her.
Despite her obvious attire, she didn't like his assumption. She hadn't had sex
in three years, and she definitely wasn't going to have it tonight with him.

“If you'll excuse me, I'll go catch a
cab and be on my way home. Alone.”

Jake shook his head and sputtered.
“CJ, you couldn't be further from the Land of Oz. Cabs don't come to this
neighborhood, honey.
They
know better.”

Cassie groaned inwardly. That would
explain the cab driver's behavior earlier when he dropped her off. Admittedly,
she didn’t frequent this part of town and was more thankful that the cab driver
knew how to get here than curious about his reaction. As neighborhoods go, the
street didn’t look ominous, but looks were deceiving.

A crescendo of laughter had Jake
glancing over his shoulder to look at the man on the other side of the room. He
was the owner of the bar, Cassie recalled Jake saying.

With his movement, Jake's jacket
gaped open, and she had the first glimpse of what this man hid behind his black
leather armor. A Beretta was tucked firmly inside a holster against his chest.
It was hidden well, but easy to find for someone trained in what to look for.
Cassie knew the gleam of the metal when she saw it. She knew the weight of it
in her hand and the smell of gunpowder when it ignited.

Dark memories had her heart hammering
wildly in her chest. But the boisterous conversation on the other side of the
bar shifted her back to her reality. Cassie glanced in that direction, but she
couldn't see a thing past the wide expanse of Jake's shoulders.

As Jake leaned his arm on the bar,
Cassie’s breath lodged in her throat. Her pulse hammered. And she wished to God
she hadn't been curious enough to look.

* * *

Jake saw terror flash across CJ’s
face. Great, she was finally beginning to understand how stupid it was for her
to be here. But just as he was about to lead her to the door, her arms abruptly
came up to his chest. She gripped his leather jacket, leaning into him as if
she were about to climb into his lap.

Confusion mixed with heightened
awareness of this enigmatic woman suddenly so close to him.

“Gun!” she screamed. With an
unbelievable force, Cassie yanked him forward to the floor until his body was
stretched over the length of hers. The air in the bar exploded into a spray of
bullets and flying glass shards. Chairs and tables tumbled over as people
screamed and scrambled for cover.

The room and everything that was
happening exploded right in front of him and registered at lightning speed.
Primal instinct took over. Screams, bullets, breaking glass and the sound of
his own heart pumping were deafening. Jake wrapped his arm around CJ's waist,
shielding her body with his own as he slowly dragged her around the corner of
the bar to relative safety on the other side. She buried her head in his chest
as he encased her body, protecting her from the flying glass from the shattered
mirror behind the bar and the bottles of booze bursting with every hit from
bullets.

It seemed to take forever for the
explosion of gunfire to stop. In reality it was probably less than thirty
seconds. But as soon as it started, it was over. It took another thirty seconds
for Jake to get his bearings once the massacre had ended.

From outside, the cold wind whistled
through the blown out windows and brought with it the sound of tires peeling
out as a car sped off down the narrow side street. Before Jake even lifted his
head, he knew the car was gone. Whoever did this would go unpunished unless he
could find a witness.

His chest tightened where CJ's face
pressed against his shirt. He didn't have to see her face to know she was
crying. Her fingers clutched his shoulders in a death grip and her body
shuddered helplessly beneath him.

It would make it easier on this case
to have a witness, but Lord help him, he didn't want it to be this fragile
woman in his arms.

# # #

Chapter Two

Cassie looked at the clock on the
wall as she sat downtown at Detective Jake Santos's desk in a cold metal chair
in the middle of an open room filled with desks and paperwork. It was two AM.
And she was alone.

In the far corner of the room,
officers absorbed details of the shoot-out at Rory’s. Jake, or rather, Detective
Jake Santos, had disappeared. That left her nothing to do but relive the horror
of the evening, or busy her mind formulating yet another wild scheme of murder.
She had the most delightful daydream of her fingers curled around Maureen's
throat. Since she wasn't a violent person by nature, there was no harm in
letting her daydream run rampant. Maureen deserved it. Cassie had just
witnessed enough violence firsthand to last her ten lifetimes and it was all
Maureen's fault.

Jake appeared in front of her holding
a Styrofoam cup, startling her.

“You okay? Still awake?”

“I don’t think I’m going to sleep for
the rest of my life. But other than that, I’m okay,” Cassie said weakly. She
wasn't okay. She wasn't okay the first time, all those years ago on that hot
Miami night when she’d witnessed her first murder. Why should it be any
different now?

But she would be, as soon as she got
some sleep and some distance from this horrendous evening. As soon as she
submerged herself deeply into work again.

Jake took her hands in his and then
curled her fingers around the cup. “Drink it. But I warn you, it's deadly.”

She looked into the cup and grimaced.
“You pass this off as coffee? I thought you were supposed to prevent murders.”

“We do what we can, but some things
are beyond our control. Your fingers are like ice cubes. This will help.”

Jake shrugged out of his leather
jacket and draped it around Cassie’s shoulders. Immediately the heat from the
jacket, left over from being encased around Jake's warm body, engulfed her. It
smelled of rawhide and man. Wrapped in it, Cassie felt small and fragile.
Protected
.
She welcomed the heat and the presence of the man who'd supplied it.

Once again, the horrible scene in the
bar flashed before her eyes before she could stop it. She remembered it in
all-too-vivid detail—the exploding glass, the cries of fear and pain…having
Jake's arms wrapped around her like a shield.

He dragged a chair next to her and
spoke in a low voice. “I have to ask you some questions.”

“I figured as much.” Cassie forced a
smile.

“What were you doing at Rory's
tonight?”

“Research.”

He lifted his gaze from his notepad
and darted a quizzical look at her. His shoulders sagged and he let out a slow
breath, tossing the pad of paper to the cluttered metal desk.

“I'm telling you the truth,” she
insisted.

“Truth? Okay, let's start with the
truth. At the bar, you told me your name was CJ. When we first got to the
station, you said your name was Cassie Lang. Your driver's license says Juanita
C. Alvarez. So I'm asking you again—”

“The C is for Cassandra,” she said,
cutting him off. “It's my middle name. Juanita is my birth name, but people
don't usually call me that. Just Cassie. CJ was for CJ Carmen, the main
character in all my books.”

“Your books? What kind of books?”

“Crime novels.”

“You were using the name of a
character in a book?”

She sighed. “Yes and no. When I
created my character, CJ Carmen, I just reversed the first two initials of my
own name.”

“And Cassie Lang?”

“My pen name. That's what my readers
know me as. I'm a crime novelist. Since I’m used to doing public events, it’s
become habit to introduce myself by my pen name.”

Jake blew out a quick breath, looking
more haggard than sure of himself as he had at the bar. “Then what were you
doing at Rory's dressed like…?” He flipped his hand so his palm was facing up,
gesturing to her scanty clothes.

She sputtered and rolled her dark
eyes. “I just told you, research.”

“Researching who? Ritchie Trumbella?”

“Who's Ritchie Trumbella?”

“The guy lying in the morgue with about
fifty bullet holes in him.”

Cassie's mind was flooded with the
gruesome scene in the bar again. Would it ever go away? “That's right. That
poor man.”

Jake raised an eyebrow. “That poor
man is the reason three other civilians and a federal agent were killed
tonight. Not to mention the countless number of other unsolved murders he's
contributed to over the years. Most of those victims are most likely chilling
at the bottom of a quarry somewhere.”

“There was a federal agent at Rory’s
tonight?”

“He came in with Ritchie. Seems I
wasn't the only one working a case against the crime boss.”