Rage Factor (2 page)

Assured that the bonding agent would “get somebody out there pronto,” Dixie thumbed the phones
DISCONNECT
button and relaxed for the wait. Her part of the job was finished.

She watched Coombs speak to the piano player, slip a few folded bills into the musician’s tip jar, and return his attention to the blushing brunette. When the music instantly segued into the opening chords of “Some Enchanted Evening,” Coombs took the woman’s hand and led her to a postage-stamp dance floor near Dixie’s table. Whatever else the man was, he was drop-dead handsome and silver-spoon elegant.

In a resonant baritone, Coombs began to sing, intimately, as if the words were meant only for the woman in his arms, yet loud enough for others to hear.

“Some enchanted evening…”

Conversation quieted. The man was worth a listen. His voice was full, warm, and smooth. He moved with a sexy, graceful ease, holding the woman as if she were fine crystal.

Was she special? Dixie wondered. Or had Regan Salles also received such ardent attention from Coombs before their “date” turned ugly?

When a club soda appeared at Dixie’s elbow, she paid rather than run a tab. The minute Coombs was in custody, she intended to split. For the first time ever—and Dixie was fast approaching forty—she was in a relationship that mattered to her. She didn’t want to screw it up. Yet five nights this week, work had kept her out late, and her excuses were beginning to sound lame even to her own ears.

She watched the handsome couple whirl about the floor, totally into themselves, as if everyone else in the room had ceased to exist. When they brushed past, Coombs still crooning
softly, Dixie read raw desire in the woman’s flushed face. The skip certainly had a knack for cozying up fast.

Two other couples had joined Coombs and his partner on the dance floor, but everyone else in the room was either alone, as Dixie was, or with a group. Did all these women have as tough a time as she did making a relationship work?

Dixie jabbed her swizzle stick at the lemon twist in her glass. Why did life have to be so damn complicated? She wanted closeness. Companionship. At the same time she wanted freedom and solitude. How could she expect a man to understand such a dilemma when she didn’t understand it herself?

As her eyes slid past the bar, they locked on someone she knew, someone she did
not
want to talk with tonight.

Too late. Casey James, stringer for the sort of tabloids that feature alien sightings and virgin births, was already off her bar stool and beelining for Dixie’s table.

“Counselor! I
knew
that was you sitting there!” Casey waved a fat cigar in one hand, a drink in the other, as she pushed toward Dixie between tables, a camera swinging from one shoulder. “I haven’t seen you since our interview after that murder case you cracked!”

She stopped short of the table, slapped the cigar hand over her mouth, and looked hastily from side to side.

“Oh, Judas Priest, are you on a case now?”

Dixie had already darted a glance at Coombs. He seemed absorbed in stroking the brunette’s silken hip and serenading her ear. Whether or not he’d heard, the worst was done. No point now in being rude.

“Hello, Casey. What brings you to the Parrot?”

Casey set her drink on Dixie’s table and dropped her squatty body into an empty chair.

“Oh, honey, it’s absolutely the
best
place for picking up stories. Buy a woman a drink, she’ll tell the wickedest tales you ever heard—truth! Clients stealing from other clients, secretaries setting their bosses up for divorce or blackmail, or both, couriers delivering anonymous packages containing
live snakes, spiders. Every one of those stories I learned from buying a woman a drink.” She paused to draw on the cigar, piggish black eyes ogling Dixie. “May I buy
you
a drink, honey?”

Dixie couldn’t help grinning at Casey’s gall.

But when she looked back at the dance floor, and the piano bar beyond it, Coombs and the brunette were nowhere in sight.

Casey James was a problem. If she discovered Dixie had followed a skip to the Parrot Lounge and the skip had just bolted, she’d stick to Dixie like Krazy Glue.

“Actually, Casey,” Dixie offered, waving the waiter over, “I do have a story you might like.” Standing, she swallowed the last of her club soda and hitched at her jeans. “How about ordering another round while I recycle this one? Then we’ll talk.”

Casey’s greedy eyes widened a fraction. “Sex or violence?”

Already moving toward the door, Dixie shrugged. “Both.”

Pacing her stride to appear unrushed, she stepped through the doorway and scanned the hall for Coombs. No luck. Except for the Parrot Lounge, only empty meeting rooms occupied this floor. No service personnel in sight. To the right, Dixie could see the elevator niche. To the left, an
EXIT
sign pointed to an enclosed stairwell that no doubt led to a parking area. The stairwell reentries were probably kept locked.

Hearing a hum that could be the elevator ascending, she jogged to the right. The hotel’s main dining room on the twenty-seventh floor offered some of the best food in the city. If the brunette was registered here, she and Coombs might be planning to catch dinner while he romanced her into inviting him back to her suite.

Dusky blue carpet muffled Dixie’s footsteps as she sprinted down the hall, hoping the elevator was the old-fashioned kind with lighted numbers to show where it stopped. She came abreast of the second meeting room, and the door opened.

A hand snapped around her wrist, yanked her into the room.

“Looking for me, darlin’?”

Coombs’ blue eyes stared down at her.

Uh-oh.

“Don’t flatter yourself, jerk.” Dixie twisted away, but his hand on her wrist was like a steel band. When she tried to knee him, he spun her around and enveloped her with his body, his arms pinning hers like baling straps.

“Heard somebody was asking about me this afternoon,” he drawled softly. “Guess that must be you.”

He smelled of Aramis, one of Dixie’s favorite men’s colognes. Until now.

She brought her boot heel down hard on his Italian loafers. He flinched, but his grip remained as tight as ever, and suddenly she could feel his wet breath in her ear. A shiver went through her. She wondered briefly about the brunette, figured it’d been her in the elevator.

“The judge missed you this morning, Coombs.”

He chuckled low, his mouth still at her ear. “The judge will get over it. Had to visit my sick mother.”

“Sure you did.” Expecting merely to finger Coombs for the HPD, Dixie had entered the hotel unarmed, except for the Kubaton, a six-inch hard-plastic rod, always on her key ring. If she could reach it…

“You have the tightest, roundest little ass under those jeans. Don’t you darlin? Tight, round … hot.”

His hand snaked between her legs.

Dixie used the motion against him, tucking quickly to flip him over her shoulders onto his back. He knew the right moves and rolled as he landed, one arm reaching out to grab her ankle. He jerked her off balance.

She hit solid on her rump, jarring her spine all the way up. Pain laced through her teeth and skull.

Then he was on top of her, pinning her arms beneath her, slamming his fist into her right breast. Dixie’s breath flew out of her as pain rushed in. She arched, trying to force him off, trying to free her hands, but his weight was like lead.

“Look at me, darlin’,” Coombs whispered. “Look at me.” He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked. “Let me see the pain shining in those sweet brown eyes.”

His other hand worked at the front of her jeans.

Dixie twisted sideways and shouldered him into a chair. The chair fell, bounced off Coombs, and landed like an iron fist on the side of Dixie’s face.

Her vision wobbled. She tasted blood, felt it dribble from her mouth. She tried again to twist beneath him, but he was too strong, too heavy.

“Since you were so hot to find me, pretty lady, I’m going to give you a treat. I’m going to bury my cock right up to your belly.” He licked the blood off her mouth.

Dixie clamped her teeth on his lower lip and bit down, jerking her head side to side like a pit bull.

Coombs grunted, loosening his hold on her hair.

She slammed a knee into his groin, but the angle was all wrong. Blood flowed from his torn lip into her mouth. She could feel her teeth click together in the thin skin beneath his lip, and the thought that she might bite it off sickened her.

Finally freeing one of her hands, she gouged at his eye. Her thumb had barely connected when a hammer blow of
his fist hit her face. Pain lashed through her cheekbone, splintering into bright red shards of light inside her head.

But she refused to let go of his lip. His whiskey breath filled her nostrils.

How can this be happening in a busy hotel?
she wondered lamely.
Can’t anyone hear?

But it’d been only a minute, maybe two, since he surprised her in the hall. And how much noise had they actually made?

Her ears rang. She’d go for Coombs’ eye again, but she wasn’t sure where her hand was or how to make it work.

She felt his thumbs on her jaw, prying her mouth open. With one abrupt thrust, she heaved him off, releasing his lip. She scrambled away, spitting blood.

“Casey!” she yelled—knowing the Parrot Lounge was too far away. Her vision had cleared, but her head felt ready to explode. Spotting the fallen chair, she grabbed it and swung upward, striking Coombs’ hip. He barely noticed.

“So you like it rough, do you, babe? Let’s see just
how
rough.” He scooped up a chair by its legs.

Dixie backed away, her chest screaking pain where Coombs had pounded it. She could hold her own against a lot of men, but at five-two, 120 pounds, she was no match for this man. He hadn’t built those muscles at a piano bar.

“Casey!” Dixie yelled again. “
Casey!”

Coombs swung the chair. Dixie dodged, but the metal frame cracked against her foot and ankle. As the blow sent her sprawling, she heard herself scream. Fury burst inside her like a Fourth of July rocket.

Hobbling to her feet, she dove at Coombs, shoving him into the wall, and this time her knee connected with his testicles. When he doubled over, Dixie butted the top of her head into his face. Blood spattered her shoulders. She kneed him again, fury driving her leg like a piston.

The door crashed open.

“There she is!”

Through her rage, Dixie saw Casey James rush through
the doorway, blue uniforms crowding behind. For a furious instant, Dixie was only mildly grateful. Another minute alone with Coombs and she’d have stomped his bastard balls into a bloody pulp, nullifying any future rape plans.

“Are you all right, honey?” Casey’s camera flashed in Dixie’s face. “Truth, woman! When you promise a story, you deliver in spades!”

“Aunt Dix, when you get your cast, I’m the first to sign it. Okay?” Ryan, Dixie’s twelve-year-old nephew, watched intently as a doctor probed her ankle.

She lay on a narrow emergency-room bed, stoic face firmly in place. Her family had gotten wind somehow of her scuffle with Coombs and had rushed to the hospital, insisting on crowding into the tiny treatment cubicle. Ryan’s slender neck stretched forward, taking in the doctor’s every move.

Dixie’s bouts with danger fascinated the boy when he heard about them thirdhand, but actually seeing his aunt injured had stiffened him up like boiled starch. Dixie wished he’d relax and not worry about her. Hooking a finger in the back pocket of his jeans, she tugged him toward her, wincing at the pain that laced every muscle in her body.

“Sorry, kid, you’ll have to sign my Ace bandage.” Her jaw didn’t want to work right on its hinge, slurring her words a bit. “No cast. The ankle’s only bruised. Right, Doc?”

“Mmmmmm … possibly.”

“Just wrap it up and let me go home.” She hated such fuss over a simple injury that never would’ve happened if she hadn’t been such a dumbass, letting Coombs spot her. Now she’d have to endure another round of family lectures on choosing a less dangerous profession.

But she felt a pang of selfishness, seeing the pallor of her sister’s face as Amy fluffed up the bed pillows like giant marsh-mallows. When a hospital aide approached, Amy snatched a blanket from the young man’s arms.

“There you are! You people keep this room way too chilly.”

“Thank you,” Dixie mumbled to the aide.

Amy never meant to be rude, but on mother-hen duty she developed tunnel vision. Blond bob frazzled above a woolly lavender sweater, she had rushed in worried and clucking, demanding the blanket as soon as she saw Dixie’s skimpy paper coverlet.

“I don’t understand a hospital that insists on stripping you down to nothing,” she said, “then freezes you blue.” Now she snapped the blanket in the air, spread it, and patted it into place. “Ryan, don’t get in the doctor’s way. He needs that light you’re blocking.”

“I’m not in his way, Mom. Just watching. You’re going to need X rays, Aunt Dix.”

“X rays!” Amy tucked the soft washed cotton around Dixie’s neck. “That’s a good idea. Don’t you think so, Doctor?”

Tiny silver bells on Amy’s charm bracelet tinkled in Dixie’s ear. Amy had worn silver bells on the day they met, Dixie recalled, the day Amy’s parents, Barney and Kathleen Flannigan, brought Dixie home from the halfway house, ink barely dry on the adoption papers. The bells had dangled from Amy’s ears that day, glinting in the sunlight, framing a broad welcoming smile. Nearly three years older than Dixie, Amy had been the best big sister any girl could want. Sometimes, though, her patting and tucking got tedious. Dixie pulled the blanket away from her chin.

“Yep.” The doctor straightened and scribbled on Dixie’s chart. “Well take a few pictures, see what’s going on in there. Are you planning to be a doctor, young man?”

“No, sir. An airplane pilot. But I might need to set a broken bone, in case of a plane crash.”

“Ry-an!” Amy’s bells tinkled nervously as she waved aside her sons comment. “Parker said the plane is perfectly safe.”