The Winter Man (5 page)

“You didn't press charges,” he muttered.

“He was in tears by the time the police got there. He swore it was the alcohol, that he didn't realize how much he'd had. He said he loved me, he couldn't believe he'd done such a thing. He begged me not to press charges.” She shook her head. “I should have. But I felt sorry for him. I always felt sorry for him. He had mental issues, but he wouldn't face that, and he wouldn't get help. I thought I could do something for him.”

“You can't fix a broken mind,” Tony said heavily. “He was obsessed with you.”

His tone intimated that he didn't understand why. She knew what Tony thought of her, because John had told her, time and again. Tony thought she was the most boring woman on earth, and he'd need to be drunk to want to touch her. Looking at his expression now, she was certain that John had been telling the truth. She was plain and prim and unexciting. It was a fact she'd faced long ago.

She pushed back her coffee cup. “After that night, it got to the point that I couldn't walk out of my apartment without running into John. He said he was going to make sure that I didn't have any other man in my life, and he was going to watch me night and day. When he told those lies about me, and then started spending the day
in the library, it began jeopardizing my job. I finally decided that I had no other choice than to file stalking charges against him.” She ran a hand over the tight bun she kept her long brown hair in. “It was what pushed him over the edge. I even knew that it would—it's why I waited so long to do anything about the problem. He swore he'd get even, no matter what it took.” She looked tired, drained of life. “When I knew that he was dead, I was so ashamed, but all I could feel was a sense of relief. I was finally free of him.”

“But you came to the funeral home,” he commented.

Her face tautened as she recalled Tony's attitude when he'd met her there. “Yes. It was the guilt. I had to see him. I thought it might make amends, somehow.”

“And you found me, instead,” he replied, grimacing at her expression. “You have to understand, all I had to go on was what John told me. And he told me a lot. He left me a letter, blaming you for his death. I had no reason to doubt him, at the time. Not until Frank told me the truth.”

Of course he'd believed his friend, she thought. It wouldn't have occurred to him that Millie wasn't a wild girl. He didn't know Millie. He didn't want to know her. It hurt, realizing that.

“I'm sorry for the way I reacted,” he said stiffly. “I didn't know.”

She shook her head. “Nobody knew. I was harassed, blackmailed and slandered by him for years, and he made
everybody think it was my own fault, that I encouraged him.” Her gaze was flat, almost lifeless. “He was the most repulsive man I've ever known.”

He frowned. “He was good-looking.”

She glanced up at him. “You can't make people love you,” she said in a subdued sort of tone. “No matter what you look like. He was coarse and crude, and ugly inside. That's where it counts, you know. The outside might have been attractive. The devil, they say, was beautiful.”

“Point taken.”

She finished her coffee. “Where do I go now?”

“Back to your apartment. I'm coming with you, to see what I'll need for surveillance.”

She frowned. “Surveillance?”

He nodded. “I want cameras and microphones everywhere. It's the only way we can save your life.”

And in that moment, she realized, for the first time, just how desperate her situation really was.

M
illie's apartment was on the third floor of a building about ten blocks from the library. She had a small balcony, on which lived many plants during the warm months. Now, the pots contained nothing except dead remnants of the autumn foliage that she'd been too busy to clean out. The past few weeks had been hectic indeed.

Her walls were full of bookcases and books. She was a great reader. Tony noted the titles ranged from history to gardening to languages to true crime. He smiled when he noticed all the romance novels, including several that had to do with professional soldiers. He'd never told her what he did for a living until today, and she hadn't guessed. But apparently she had an adventurous nature that she kept tightly contained, like her hair in that bun.

He noted that she liked pastel colors, and used them in her decorating. The apartment's contents weren't expensive, but they suited the rooms in which she lived. She had good taste for a woman on a budget.

He poked his nose into every nook and cranny of the place, making notes in a small notebook, about entrance, exit and possible avenues of intrusion. Her balcony was a trouble spot. A man with an automatic rifle could see right into the apartment through the glass sliding doors, which had no curtains. The doors had the usual locks, but no dead bolts. The apartment was only feet away from an elevator and a staircase, which gave it easy access. There was no security for the building, and Tony had noticed two or three suspicious-looking men on his way up in the elevator.

He dug his hands into his pockets. It had seemed like a good plan at the time, but now that he'd seen where Millie lived, he knew he couldn't just move in with her and start waiting for an attack to come.

“This won't work,” he said flatly.

She turned from the hall closet, where she'd been pulling out a coat and a sweater, and stared at him blankly. “What?”

“This place is a death trap,” he said matter-of-factly. “Easy entrance and exit right outside the door, no dead bolts, a perfect line-of-sight aim for anybody with a high-powered rifle with a scope. Add to that a noticeable lack of security and a few shady characters who live in the
building, and you've got an impossible situation. You can't stay here.”

“But it's where I live,” she said plaintively. “I can't just move because some crazy person is trying to kill me. Besides, wouldn't he just follow me?”

“Probably,” he had to admit.

“Then what do I do, live out of my car and switch parking lots every night?” she wondered.

He burst out laughing. He hadn't credited her with a sense of humor. “You'd need a bigger car,” he agreed.

She let out a long breath. “I guess I could do something illegal and get arrested,” she thought aloud. “I'd be safe in jail.”

“Not really,” he replied. “Gangs operate in every prison in this country, and in other countries. They're like corporations now, Millie—they're international.”

“You're kidding,” she said, aghast.

“It's the truth. They have a hierarchy, even in prison, and some measure of control and exploitation. They can order hits inside or outside.”

She sat down heavily on the arm of her sofa. “Call the U.S. Marshal's office,” she said. “Tell them I qualify for the witness protection program. I can be renamed and transplanted.”

“Not unless you testify against somebody really evil,” he returned. “Sorry.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Ouch.”

He lifted a huge shoulder. “So we have to look for a different solution. I'll take you back to the hotel with me—”

She flushed and stood up. “I'm not moving in with you.”

“Okay. Which one of your coworkers would you like to put into the line of fire?” he asked. “Because that's your choice right now.”

She looked worried. “I don't know any of my coworkers that well, and I wouldn't ask them to risk being killed on my account even if I did.”

His eyes were curious. “You've worked there for years, and you don't know any of your colleagues well?”

She bit her lower lip. “I don't mix well. I live in another world from most modern people.”

“I don't understand.”

She laughed. It had a hollow sound. “I go to church, pay my bills on time, obey the law and go to bed with the chickens, alone. I don't fit into a society that rewards permissiveness and degrades virtue. I don't go around with people who think cheating is the best way to get ahead, and money doesn't mean much to me, beyond having enough to get by. Making money seems to be the driving force in the world these days, regardless of what you have to do to get it.”

She made him feel uncomfortable. She was describing his own world, into which he fit quite well.

She saw that and sighed. “Sorry. I told you I wasn't normal.”

“I haven't said a word,” he said defensively.

She searched his dark eyes. “Frank mentioned that you think women are a permissible pleasure, and that the brassier they are, the better you like them.”

His jaw tautened. “What's wrong with that?” he asked. “I'm a bachelor and I don't want to settle down.”

She lifted her hands. “I didn't mean it as an insult. I'm just pointing out that our views of life are very different. I'm not going to be happy staying in the room, overnight, with a man I barely know.”

He could have debated her take on their relationship. They'd known each other for years, even if distantly. But he didn't pursue it. He cocked an eyebrow. “I haven't offered you half my bed,” he said curtly. “And I never would. You aren't my type.”

“I thought I just said that,” she replied.

He made a sound deep in his throat. She made him feel small. He looked around the apartment. “I've got a suite,” he said after a minute. “You'll have your own bedroom. The door has a lock.” He looked straight into her eyes. “Not that you'll need it.”

That was meant as an insult. She understood it. But she'd had years of practice at hiding her feelings from him. She didn't react. She didn't have much of a choice, either. Thinking of her close call at the library was still unsettling. John's criminal friends would see her dead, if they could. Tony was the only thing standing between herself and a funeral parlor, and she was arguing. She
pushed back a wisp of brown hair and turned away from him. She was running out of choices.

“Well, I can't stay here,” she said to herself.

“No, you can't. And local law enforcement doesn't have the sort of budget they'd need to house and feed you indefinitely. This could go on for weeks, Millie.”

“Weeks?”
She was staring at him with pure horror. “Surely not! The bomb…”

“May have been a test,” he interrupted, “to give your assassin a dry run, show him how quickly local law enforcement reacts to an emergency call.”

“I hadn't considered that,” she confessed.

“You should. This isn't some petty criminal,” he added. “He's a professional. He may not be the best—that plastic explosive he used for the bomb wasn't well concealed or particularly well made. But he knows how to get to you, and that makes him—or her—dangerous. We have to put you someplace where he doesn't have easy access, lure him in and help him make a mistake, so we can nab him.”

“How do we do that?” she asked.

“You move in with me,” he said simply. “We let the word get around. Then we wait for developments.”

“Wait.” She tugged at a lock of loose hair. “I can't wait a long time,” she worried. “I have to work. I have to support myself.”

“You have to be alive in order to do those things,” he
reminded her. “I'll call Frank. He can get his contact in the police department to help us out.”

“That might be wise,” she agreed. She was still debating her options, but she didn't seem to have any left. She wished she could go back in time, to a period in her life when she hadn't known Tony Danzetta. She'd eaten her heart out over him for so many years that it had become a habit. Now here he was, protecting her from danger, for reasons he still hadn't disclosed. He was honest to the point of brutality about his lack of interest in her as a woman. Was it guilt, she wondered, that drove him to help her? Perhaps she'd have the opportunity in the days ahead to learn the answer to that question.

* * *

His hotel suite was huge. Millie was fascinated by the glimpse of how the other half lived. She knew what a suite cost in this luxury hotel, and she wondered how Tony's government job made it affordable to him. Maybe, she considered, his father, the contractor, had left him a lot of money. He was obviously used to having the very best of everything.

“Hungry?” he asked when he'd put her suitcase inside what was to be her bedroom.

“Actually, I am,” she said. “Could we go somewhere and get a salad?”

He pursed his lips, smiling. “What sort of salad?”

“A Caesar salad would be nice,” she said.

“How about a steak to go with it, and a baked potato with real butter and chives and sour cream?”

Her eyes widened. “That sounds wonderful. Coffee, too.”

He nodded. He picked up the phone, punched in a number, waited a minute and then proceeded to give an order to someone on the other end of the line. It must be room service, she thought. It fascinated her that he could just pick up the phone and order food. The only time she'd ever done that was when she ordered pizza, and small ones, at that.