Кэрол Дуглас: Cat In A Topaz Tango

“And Kinsella?”

“He was already an amateur magician. Having an Irish temper, teen-boy fury, and survivor’s guilt didn’t help. He found the bombers and . . . I don’t know, ratted on them? Ireland was too hot to hold him; anywhere was. The IRA put a price on his head. That’s when he was recruited by this unofficial counterterrorism group, as I understand. They did it to save his life, and I suppose they admired his nerve. As do we all.”

“Speak for yourself, Matt,” she said with irony, no longer silent with shock. “So the Interpol record was a decoy, full of disinformation for stupid domestic cops like me.”

“It meant his life if he was tied to his real past. I’m wondering what this did to the family.”

“His cousin’s?”

“And his. One lost a son, one didn’t. That doesn’t go down well even in close families. Maybe especially not in close families.”

“That’s why he’s so fanatical about protecting Temple.”

“Probably.”

Her palm slammed the rough tabletop. “So Max Kinsella is a misjudged hero and I’m the villainous pursuer of an innocent lamb.”

“I’d never call Max ‘innocent,’ ” Matt said dryly.

Molina let herself relax back into her seat, her features wincing. Matt knew that wince. Knife wounds became inflamed and, he imagined, even healing stitches pulled.

“Kitty the Cutter gave me a four-inch slash, but I saw a shady doctor who managed to tape it shut,” he mentioned. “And you?’

“Eighty-six stitches.”

“ Whew. The number sounds oddly appropriate.”

To be “eighty-sixed” meant you’d been sunk.

She glared at him, thought about laughing, and then winced instead. “Don’t humanize me, Devine. I can’t take that right now.”

“So what’s the deal?”

“Are you right? Kinsella is basically a good guy with a bad boy façade? I’ve been overreacting and wasting my time?”

He considered it. He was used to weighing right and wrong, good and bad, and giving people a lot of leeway on those black-and-white extremes.

“Yeah. Temple’s no victim or dupe. I won’t say Kinsella didn’t have a big load of guilt to bear, and like all loners he has an arrogant way of thinking he knows what’s right for other people.”

“Like you and Temple?”

Matt grinned. “Maybe. Still, the fact is he can’t offer any woman a stable domestic life, not that he didn’t have hopes.”

“Funny.” She turned her beer mug around to study the condensation droplets. “I never gave him credit for being human enough to have hopes. Maybe I was judging him by my own yardstick.”

“It’s a rigorously straight one.”

“How the tightly wound have fallen. Okay, Mr. Midnight. Mr. Radio advice man. What do I do now? I may have blown my career chasing a devil who could be a saint in disguise. Three people too many know about my misadventure at the House of Max.”

“You including me in that?”

“Yeah. You’re young, you’re lovely, you’re engaged. You’ll tell your squeeze. No secrets, right, for love’s young dream?”

“No. I won’t tell her. I think you should. Someday not too far off”

Molina opened her mouth. Shut it. “You do extract a mighty stiff penance, Padre. ”

“All in proper measure to the sinner and the sin.”

“Pride is the worst of the Seven Deadly, right?”

“Yeah, but the easiest to fix.”

She stood up. Threw a couple of twenties on the table. “Dinner’s on me. I’ll meet you at the rambling wreck in the parking lot. I’m going to the ladies’ room to eat crow for dessert.”

This time she really needed it. Matt watched her leave, her gait a slightly halting swing, not due to the little beer they’d had, but the hidden stitches.

Would she tell Temple the truth? Give away that Max’s place was not really in other hands?

Naw, he thought as he wove through the beery crowds to wait for her by the door. Now that Max was out of the picture, Molina had no reason to hassle Temple about him anymore.

Matt had to wonder on the drive home from Molina’s house how he’d been forcibly cast into the role of Hamlet: to tell or not to tell Temple.

Torn between two women, and feeling like a fool. That was a line from an old hit song Ambrosia often played on her radio show. He knew he was on the horns of an ethical dilemma, and they were usually demonic.

Molina had confided in him, and he should honor that. But she wasn’t his beloved. Temple was, and she deserved to know that Max was very likely alive, even though missing. Matt couldn’t help thinking she—and he—would be better off without the possibility of another Max resurrection out there somewhere.

Not that he wished Max Kinsella any ill. The guy’d led a tough but honorable and likely lonely life. Doing years of penance as a counterterrorism agent to atone for stupid teenage shenanigans turned lethal seemed pretty good payback. Way more than Max owed his cousin Sean. They’d both decided to look in on the Irish troubles in Londonderry. They’d both competed for the favors of Kathleen O’Connor. It wasn’t Max’s fault that he got the girl and Sean got an IRA pub bombing. The “life narrative,” as the politicians called it added up to Max as a hero, though, and Matt was just a midnight talk jockey with a priestly past. He could use a break from rivaling some James Bond with Irish charisma.

To be or not to be: a good friend and an insecure lover, or an honest lover and a Judas friend? He would wait to worry about it until the dang dance competition was over, in a week.

Right now he had to face his nightly radio show, then another daylong dance rehearsal in preparation for the purgatory of a solid week of daily rehearsals and the nightly live telecast of whatever ballroom dance he pulled out of a top hat. Temple had done something like this a couple of months ago to safeguard Molina Jr., Mariah, the would-be media teen queen. If Temple could stomach portraying a Goth teenager, Matt supposed he could cut a rug or two.

Corny. Humiliating. Just like all of national network TV these days. He’d rather go on Survivor and eat maggots.

Torn between two left feet, and looking like a fool . . . .

Max would handle it in a cakewalk, Matt thought.

Alpine Do-si-do

“Tall, blonde?”

He nodded anxiously. His name was James McKlosky for the moment, according to the stolen credit card in his back jeans’ pocket.

He was on the run from the posh Swiss private clinic just up the Alps where he was registered as Michael Randolph, although he didn’t have a scrap of that identity on him. He was secretly known as Max to the older gent who’d paid to have his mangled body and mind admitted and treated there some six weeks ago.

None of this mattered because he didn’t remember a thing about himself since he’d awakened in said posh clinic. Just three days ago, he’d fled an attempted assassination with the help of his psychiatrist, his tall, blond, attractive psychiatrist, an intriguing blend of French and German genes called Revienne Schneider.

While she’d delved for his missing memory, he’d found he liked her mind and various French folderols. Too bad something in him didn’t trust the luck of the draw. They’d shared a rough road trip for three days, but he still wasn’t sure she wasn’t a planted assassin. Waking up to find her gone was maybe the gift of the morning. Too bad he didn’t buy sudden disappearances, not even his own. He would find her and then find out if she was an enemy, or just a really attractive diversion.

Right now he was pretending she was his missing wife.

“She was wearing a pink suit and boots. The boots aren’t pink,” he added. “Just black. I missed the bus and she’s probably looking for me too.”