Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

She heard the sheets rustle as Matt sat up and pushed them back. “What are you saying?”

“That it hadn’t occurred to me, but they could come back, could come here. It isn’t fair to let you do guard duty without letting you know that there’s more to be worried about than me just freaking out.”

“Why? Why are they after you?” He came around to sit beside her on the bed’s edge.

“Not me. Max.”

“Hmm.”

“What do you mean, ‘Hmm’?”

“Electra mentioned that you’d had a friend. A stage magician, she said.”

“What else did Electra mention?”

“Only that he’d moved on,”

“She didn’t say how?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Restrained of you. Well, Max overdid the magician bit one day, and vanished. Just like that. Four months ago. Left behind a few of his few favorite things. Me. A motor' cycle I didn’t know about, I’ve since learned. Some clothes and CDs.”

“The men who assaulted you wanted him?”

“They wanted to know where he was.”

“And you couldn’t tell them.”

“No. Wouldn’t, either, if I could help it.”

“Is that why you and the police lieutenant—”

“Why we don’t get along? Sure, along with plain, rock-bottom mutual antipathy.”

“I was going to say—why you know each other?”

“Oh. Well, we don’t get along. God, I hated telling Molina about those creeps being after Max! She’s after him herself, you know. Until tonight she wouldn’t tell me why. Even what she finally told me sounds like only half of it.”

“Why, then?”

She glanced at Matt. The moonlight reached the end of the bed, so she could see his features, and he could read the truth of hers.

“The night Max vanished, he’d finished a run at the Sultan’s Palace in the Goliath. That same night the body of the casino’s security assistant was found in a secret hideaway in the ceiling—not the ordinary surveillance area above the gaining tables, but a hidden, unauthorized observation post.”

“Coincidence,” Matt said, shaking his head.

“Molina doesn’t believe in coincidence. She thinks Max had the expertise to fashion that hidden post, to get in there, and to get someone else in there, maybe to kill that person. ”

“So why is she down on you?”

“Because when she came looking for answers about Max, I didn’t have any.”

“Or were you just not giving out any?”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have talked if I knew, but I didn’t know! And Molina didn’t believe me any more than those men did, although I gotta say her interrogation technique, much as it leaves to be desired, is infinitely preferable to theirs.”

“Poor kid,” Matt said impulsively, his fingers pushing into the curls at the nape of her neck.

A kindly gesture, abstracted almost, but Temple felt a silken shiver down her spine that had nothing to do with panic attacks.

That’s when she realized something else had awakened her and driven her out of the bedroom—loneliness under pressure, a need for comfort and care after a terrifying ordeal.

And here they were, all alone together. She wouldn’t even have to worry about violating a bed Max and she had shared. No ghosts but the man dressed only in white martial-arts garb and moonlight.

She held herself still, neutral, and Matt’s hand dropped away.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I stayed because I knew that you wouldn’t feel safe from those men for a long time, especially tonight. If they do come here, I’d be ready for them. I’m the human self-defense machine, remember? If they’re really out to get you specifically, you should do more than contact that self-help group. You should study martial arts yourself.”

“Oh, Matt! Who’d take me seriously? Martial Arts Mouse strikes again. These guys were big.”

“Size has nothing to do with martial arts. They teach little kids.”

“I’m not a jockette. The only muscles I’ve built up are in my feet.”

“That’s why it’s ideal for you. It doesn’t depend on brute strength. There’s a studio only blocks from here. Jack Ree’s a great teacher.”

“Well, the gear is kind of cute”—she tugged on his full-cut sleeve—“but I’d get lost in it. And I bet I couldn’t wear my high heels, right?”

“Not if you want to kick the menace out of anybody. We work barefoot.”

“Never! Not in public.”

“You really have a thing about it, don’t you?”

“Appearing without high heels for me is like appearing nude would be for somebody else,” she said firmly.

Matt leaned over to inspect her feet. “You’re barefoot now.”

“Except at home,” she added with great dignity.

He pondered for a moment. “I can’t stay here every night.”

“Who says?” she couldn’t resist saying. “Oops. Must be the Tylenol talking.”

He was thinking hard and hadn’t heard her, or had and wasn’t going to comment. “I could teach you,” he said. “Here. At home. Then you wouldn’t have an excuse.”

“Here?”

He looked around the room. “Not here. Down by the pool. I could borrow a couple mats from Jack. You don’t

work nine-to-five every day, and I’ve got afternoons off.”

“Would I have to wear the cutesy pajamas?”

“I thought you liked mine.”

“On you. And not even Cuban heels?”

“The only thing you’re going have on your heels will be calluses.”

“Sounds unappetizing.”

“I’m serious, Temple. You might find out you’re not as little as you think you are.”

She shrugged. “You and Molina,” she conceded sourly. “A couple of authoritarian do-gooders. Just for all your meddling, I’m going to find the G-string murderer, and tie him—or her—in knots with my new tai kwan chi.”

“Tai chi or tae kwon do,” Matt said, laughing. “Why should your finding another murderer get my goat?”

“It won’t, but I hope it’ll fry Lieutenant Molina down to her hard-boiled clodhopper sole.”

T alking to someonein the middle of the night was always therapeutic. When Temple returned to her bedroom—unaccompanied, darn!—visions of herself playing Karate Kid danced in her head until the fantasy became a dream and dream, morning.

She slipped into low-heeled slides and a wraparound sundress she didn’t have to dislocate her arms to get into, and entered the sunny front room. Not to worry. No Matt. The sofa was a sofa again, with the bedding folded neatly on one arm. Matt must have learned such disciplined bed-making at boot camp or something.

She shuffled into the kitchen for something hot and bracing. With Matt gone, Temple enjoyed a certain, guilty relief. She could limp around the apartment without putting a brave face on her injuries, and without worrying about what her actual makeup-bare face looked like. She could even cuss under her breath.

And she did. It hurt to open the cupboard door and reach up for the mug, to turn on the faucet and twist open the instant-coffee jar. Running the microwave didn’t hurt, thank goodness.

She turned from the cupboards, looking for some Equal to sweeten the straight black bitterness of coffee, and saw a foreign object poised on the opposite counter. Her shoe. Whole again. Heeled, so to speak. Heel and sole.

Temple smiled as she hobbled over to pick it up. Matt must have gotten up extra early and Super Glued the heel back on. She was standing there with a cup of coffee in one hand and mooning over a shoe in the other when her doorbell rang.

She glanced at the black-cat and pink-neon wall clock. Eight o’clock. Who’d call that early? Unless Lieutenant Molina couldn’t wait until nine for Temple to start her mug-shot search.