Eileen Wilks - Just A Little Bit Married?

One

He dreamed of snow and cold and blood.

Raz was naked when the phone rang that December morning. His covers lay on the floor where he’d kicked them at some point during the restless night. His skin was chilled, clammy, and he told himself that was why he’d dreamed of the cold again.

But he knew better. He knew what the cold meant, and where the blood had come from.

The phone rang again. He groped for it as he sat up. “Rasmussin,” he muttered, reaching automatically for the cigarettes and lighter that should be right beside the phone. Then he remembered. He’d quit. Two months and three days and—he glanced at the clock—seven hours ago, he’d quit smoking. He cursed tiredly.

“Good morning to you, too,” his brother said.

Raz rubbed a hand over his chest, where some of the cold from the dream seemed to be lodged. The warmth from his hand didn’t dispel it. “It’s seven-fifteen,” he said irritably. “You want to know how much sleep I’ve had?”

“Not especially,” Tom said. The slight hiss of static told Raz that Tom was on his cellular phone. “I want you to drag your lazy butt out of bed and listen. Javiero got to one of my witnesses last night. The orderly.”

“Damn.” Raz might not be on the H.P.D. payroll at the moment, but the habit of years was too strong to break. Houston was his city. He kept up with what happened in it, so he knew which case Tom was talking about. Three weeks ago bullets had filled a local emergency room when Javiero and two other members of the Padres “deposed” their current leader. Four people were killed, three others injured.

The press and the public dubbed it the worst outbreak of gang violence yet, perhaps because it happened on supposedly safe territory, away from the Padres’ turf. Because of the uproar, the case had come to Tom in Special Investigations. Tom’s task force had since caught up with the other two gunmen, but Javiero was still loose. “Is the orderly dead?”

“What do you think? Javiero went right to the guy’s home with that Uzi of his. The bullets damn near cut my witness in half. The neighbor who was talking to him when the little bastard opened up is in critical condition.”

“Damn.” Reluctantly Raz faced the fact that he was wide awake at seven-fifteen in the morning and there were no cigarettes in the apartment. For the thousandth time he wondered why he’d picked this time to quit. “You have other witnesses.”

“One of them suffered a severe loss of memory after he heard about the shooting last night.”

“And the other?”

“She’s sticking.” There was satisfaction in Tom’s voice. “Even though she’s scared spitless, and with reason. I don’t have the manpower to get her the kind of round-the-clock protection she needs until we catch up with Javiero.”

An alarm went off in Raz’s mind. “Tom, I don’t—”

“I’ve persuaded her to hire a bodyguard. She’s a doctor, so she can afford it.”

“Fine. Great. Have you suggested North’s agency? They’re reliable.”

“You claim you want to go private. Of course, we both know that’s just an excuse to sit around in your underwear and watch your toenails grow. How many jobs have you turned down this month?”

Three. “I’ve been looking.”

“How many have you turned down?”

“None of your goddamn business.”

Silence from the other end, except for the muted sounds of traffic that indicated Tom was in his car.

“Look,” Raz said, rubbing a hand over his face. Several days’ worth of stubble rasped his palm. “I guess you mean well, but I don’t need my big brother to ride in and save me from myself. I can find my own job.” When he had to. When the right job turned up. He still had some money saved up, after all. There was no rush.

Tom snorted. “You really believe I’m thinking of you here? I don’t risk my witnesses for you or anyone else. I need a guard for her. I want you to do it. When you’re not busy feeling sorry for yourself, you’re almost as good as you think you are.”

“Private security companies—”

“They aren’t good enough. Not for this.”

Raz’s eyebrows went up. Could his by-the-book brother actually have allowed himself to get personally involved in a case? Not with the witness, of course. Tom was too honorable to cheat on his wife. Besides, he was head-over-heels in love with her.

“I want you for it,” Tom said flatly. “Jacy got a threatening note from Javiero. yesterday. Apparently he doesn’t like the coverage she’s been giving his story.”

Oh, sweet Jesus. “She’s all right? And the baby?”

“Both of them are fine. She says I’m overreacting. A dozen other journalists, both print and TV, got similar messages yesterday. Even a nutcase like Javiero can’t go around killing them all, not when he’s trying to hide out.”

“It may be more of a power trip than a real threat.”

“Has your brain rotted out completely in the last couple months? I take a death threat from a man who’s killed at least five people pretty seriously.”

Raz bit back his too-ready anger. Tom was entitled to be touchy under the circumstances. “Javiero is scum, but he’s not stupid scum. By now he knows he’s going down. He just wants to make it happen his way. Sending death threats to journalists gets him more press, more attention.”

“If he really believed he was going down he wouldn’t be offing witnesses.”

Raz grimaced. Tom was one hell of a cop. The best. But he didn’t understand Javiero. Raz did. He’d lived with people like that for years. Hell, he’d been someone like that, in one of his alter egos. “One thing you have to understand about Javiero. Death and prison don’t worry him much, but pride, name, reputation—they mean everything. If he makes a big enough splash, takes enough people with him when he goes down, it makes him more real.”

“Maybe,” Tom said. “Maybe that is his motive right now—attention. He probably doesn’t realize Jacy is my wife. She still uses her maiden name professionally. But once he finds out—if he finds out—his attitude is apt to change.”

Raz’s knuckles went white on the receiver. Tom was right. If Javiero found out that one of the reporters he’d threatened was the wife of the cop who was pursuing him, it might make an attack on her irresistible.

With Jacy in danger, Raz had no choice. He had to do whatever he could, even if that meant being responsible for this witness’s life.

Even though the witness was a woman.

He took a deep breath and fought back the panic churning in his stomach. “What do you want me to do?”

“Take care of my witness. Keep her alive until we find Javiero and lock him up. I don’t want that son of a bitch walking when this goes to trial.”

“One witness’s testimony is no guarantee of a conviction.” Eyewitnesses were, in fact, notoriously unreliable.

“We’ve got physical and circumstantial evidence, too, but I need her. Juries don’t always trust a lab tech’s report, and this woman makes a hell of a good witness.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She’s a doctor, a trauma specialist, though she doesn’t look it. I doubt she’s more than an inch over five foot, and—”

Raz interrupted impatiently. “I didn’t ask for a physical description. What is she like?”

“Quiet Intense. Easy to underestimate. She’s got one hell of a memory for faces, fortunately, and when she’s sure of her facts she can’t be budged. She’s sure it was Javiero she saw that night. She recognized him.”

“How did she know him?”

“She volunteers at the free clinic on Burroughs twice a month. It seems he took his sister there a couple times.”

“Sounds like a real saint.”