Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

“I — I think it’s ‘worse’. I think that’s the stripper killer.”

Temple did not explain that she’d parked in the dark on purpose to hide her car. An undercover operative does not give away trade stupidities…er, secrets. Especially not at Secrets. Was she still a little punchy?

“Good thing you had that pepper spray.” Nadir paused to answer a question on the open line. “North side of the lot. Yeah.” He shook his head at Temple. “I don’t know what to do with you, Tess. If this guy is the stripper killer, and I kinda think it might not be that bad, you just walked right into his hands. Haven’t you got anybody to look out for you?”

“Alley cats?” Temple suggested, shrugging. The tears were stopping and so were the shakes. “Who is it?”

“We’ll let the police handle that, little lady.”

“No. I really, really want to know. Now.”

Rafi Nadir stared at her. She knew she looked worse than a drowned, red-eyed rat. She knew he thought she was stupid and reckless, which she had been, but only because she was smart and tough, in secret. And she knew he thought women needed to be bossed around for their own good. But. She really needed to see who this guy was.

And he saw that she had earned that right.

So he bent down to roll the guy over. Tall, lanky, all in black. Not as tall as Max, but close enough to stop a heart, hers, for a minute. Black Levis, black work shirt. Not Max. Not the photographer.

“Oh, my God!” She pointed as if Nadir couldn’t see for himself. “It’s that sound machine kid. The club DJ. He gets around from place to place too, like a stripper, doesn’t he? Don’t the DJs do that?”

“Yeah —” Nadir was looking down at his victim with more respect. “But he’s just a kid.”

“A kid in a candy store. I bet these guys get the idea they own these women they work around.”

Nadir started to say something, looked at Temple, then shut his mouth.

“Listen,” he said. “I’d better not hang around.” Sirens were wailing like alley cats in the distance. He looked over his shoulder. People who had been peering out the club’s open door now were starting to trickle onto the asphalt. “They’ll help you keep him down if he gets antsy. Just use your spray. And try not to let it blow back in your face.”

Temple regarded the shadowy figure on the ground. Her fingers found the spray can among the spandex.

“Smart idea.” Nadir’s hand rested on her shoulder for a sexless, bracing second. “You take full credit for this one, kid. You didn’t see me.”

And then he left.

Temple slumped against the van.

Wow.

She aimed her pepper spray at the ground near the young man’s head.

She was wrong. Her hand still shook.

She was thinking about what would happen to Max if she had been left dead like Cher Smith in a strip club parking lot.

Siren Song

“You’re wrong,” he said.

“You’ll have all the time in the world to prove it.”

Her voice was level, strong, intense. But Molina was worried.

He had been the hardest takedown in her career, and she was half-afraid that he had let her win in the end, not because he was a gentleman but because it suited him.

So now she had Max Kinsella, handcuffed, to put in her personal car, which was equipped with nothing but a police radio.

She sure didn’t want him behind her, so the passenger seat was the only option and it wasn’t a good one.

“Get in,” she said, as if she just loved the idea of putting him there.

She shoved him into the seat, pushing down on his head to force him inside.

His height was still too much for the Toyota’s roof line, and he banged his skull.

Good, maybe it’d daze him a little. It was a twenty-minute ride to headquarters and she didn’t want to distract herself calling in or doing anything but keeping him in custody until he was safely locked up somewhere even an magician couldn’t abracadabra his sleazy way out of.

Kinsella sat hunched forward in the seat, partly because of his height, partly because with his hands manacled behind his back he couldn’t lean back. Tough.

“Temple’s life could be on your head,” he said. Sounded strangled, like he really cared. And getting…cozy with her if it would help get him free. What a creep!

“Can it.”

She snapped on her seatbelt, started the car, put it into gear, checked that he was still bound and pulled out of the Secrets parking lot.

“You don’t know that Temple isn’t in danger,” he said, “and you really don’t have anything solid on me.”

“I’m sure I can work up a probable cause that would curl a judge’s hair. You have been caught on too many dirty scenes too many times.”

“Not caught. Not until now.”

“Why do I think that you think you’re not really caught?”

He shrugged, stared ahead, intently watching the street as if he were behind the wheel, not she.

Just fifteen more minutes and she’d be rid of him.

The radio squawked. She wanted to turn up the squelch dial, but couldn’t risk leaning down into the well of the car. Perfect opportunity to sandbag her.

After a buzz of competing calls, she heard the words, “Baby Doll’s.”

Kinsella thrashed a little against his bonds. Solid-steel suspicion, that’s what she had on him. It would have to be enough.

She had to lean forward to pick up the mike. Had to. Kept her eyes on him as if she was a staple gun and he was wallpaper.

More voices chimed in, sputtering through the static. Action.

She waited for a break and got on. “Molina. What’s going on at Baby Doll’s?”

“Perp down. Victim’s okay. She’s saying it’s the stripper killer.”

Molina hit the brakes so hard her passenger’s forehead tapped the windshield.

She made sure he wasn’t using the distraction to attack her, but he was listening as hard as she was.

“Victim is okay?”

“Yeah. She pepper-sprayed the guy” — Kinsella jerked, and she glared him to stillness — “to kingdom come. He’s out cold yet.”

“Who’s the guy?”

“Some DJ kid for the clubs. Tyler something.”

Molina gave up and pulled the car over to the curb, putting on the emergency blinkers. Tyler. Who’da thunk it? She had a horrifying suspicion who might have.

“And the intended victim? You got a name yet?”

“Tess, from what some people around here said.”

Tess?

“But it turns out it’s really Temple.”

Of course. The awful inevitability of it was almost blinding.

“Yeah,” the radio squawked. “That’s a first name. Temple Barr. Tiny little thing, but she put this guy down flat.”

The radio went silent.

“I think I’ll be going now,” Kinsella said quietly.

She looked over. The handcuffs dangled from one wrist, then the empty one was snapped on her right wrist, the left one jumped from his wrist to snap shut on the steering wheel.

It all happened faster than the blink of an eye, especially an eye controlled by a mind that was busy absorbing vast new vistas on a series of old problems.

“You bastard.” Her tonelessness made the word even uglier. “I ultimately would have had to let you go anyway. This time.”

He opened the door, jumped out, leaned his head back in a sliver of open door.

“I know you would have had to.” Kinsella rubbed his forehead, grinned. “But ultimately it’s more fun this way. You do still have the key somewhere on you, don’t you, Lieutenant?”

He slammed the door shut and vanished…only because she couldn’t move much to see where he had gone.

While she struggled to dig the key one-handed out of her rear paddle holster, fighting the damned seatbelt all the way, the radio buzzed with the happy crosstalk of high adventure and the taunting muted shriek of sirens speeding to the crime scene.