Smokescreen Read online

  He bought her a Milky Way.

  She took the first bite and closed her eyes as if heaven had descended upon her, chewing with obvious delight. Shoot, if that’s what candy did for her, what would she do if he—

  He blinked. He hadn’t expected that thought. Not in the middle of this particular night and this particular crisis. He quickly thumbed change into the machine and pushed the keypad to drop another candy bar into his waiting hand.

  Sam swallowed. She didn’t open her eyes when she said, “Madonna sang a pretty song to the creeps who beat her. She wasn’t going to tell them anything—not even as much as she told you. She said she liked you but they were mean even before they quit pretending to be nice.”

  “You talked to her?” Jethro stopped his hand just before the candy reached his mouth. “How did you—they won’t even let me ask about her.”

  Sam didn’t answer his question. “She told them pretty much everything. I’m not even sure how she knew that much—but then, I haven’t been through the system, so I have no idea what you learn on the way through. Too much, apparently. That car bomb came from our mean guys…and I know who it was. I know who he’s looking for. And I bet he’s counting on the disruption of that bomb to keep anyone from stopping him.” She sighed, and when she opened her eyes it was with renewed determination. Amazing what chocolate could do. “I’ve got to warn the Captain.”

  She pushed away from the wall, popping the last of the candy into her mouth and tossing the wrapper in a trash can on the way by. Jethro hastened to catch up. “You haven’t told me a thing.”

  “Haven’t I?” She glanced back, affecting surprise.

  “Nothing I didn’t already know—or that I need to know. Don’t forget I’ve got my own reasons for helping out.”

  She stopped short, pivoting slowly and pinning her gaze on his. Sunshine through honey. “I don’t need your help,” she said. “I never did. You invited yourself along because you thought I’d get careless and feed you useful secrets, and it didn’t happen. Time to give it up. I’ve got work to do.” And she left him standing there, heading for the bank of phones on the other side of the Emergency reception desk.

  He stared after her a moment, then blew a gust of air through his mustache. “Holy freakin’ iceberg.”

  “Waaay too seriously with the whole Batman thing,” she informed him over her shoulder.

  “Hey!” He ran a few steps to catch up with her, turning to put himself in front of her and then walking backward toward the phones when she didn’t hesitate. Only when one of the phones pressed into his back did she stop, fishing in her pocket with an annoyed expression and little success. He dropped a few quarters into her hand. “Didn’t you ever want to be a superhero?”

  She pulled her brows together in a faintly puzzled, newly annoyed expression. “I never wanted it…” and then she pressed her lips together and dropped the change into the phone, quickly tapping out a number.

  Jethro waited while she did, easing around to the side so she couldn’t take off on him so quickly. After an endless number of rings, Sam slammed the phone back down on the hook and stared at it with an expression that should have melted it. Then she gave him a hard, dismissive glance. “I don’t have time for this,” she said, and what she meant was that she didn’t have time for him.

  “Make time,” he told her. “Or I’ve got some photos to share with the police.”

  He hadn’t expected it to stop her so short. And then she seemed to realize she’d given too much away and she turned away from him—but stopped short at that, too, and finally turned to face him. “You’re full of crap. The police don’t care about me.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe I should just show those photos around the street and see what people have to say.”

  She informed him what they’d have to say in one succinct, anatomically impossible suggestion.

  Unperturbed, he crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the phone beside him, and said, “You all have the same eyes.”

  You all have the same eyes.

  Dammit all anyway. She didn’t need this. Not with the Captain out of touch and no one else to contact and the fair certainty that Scalpucci would move on the other houses in the local underground, hunting his wife. He’d not only likely find her, but he’d go through everyone in his way to get her. Other women on the run, other house guardians…

  And what did it matter, anyway? So Jethro had photos. It didn’t matter who he showed them to. He was the one who would seem crazy, claiming that the woman in the photos—her true appearance, so carefully hidden until now—had actually been different in person.

  Except she’d taken too long to respond to him…given herself away. He might not know just what those photos meant to her, but he knew they meant something.

  Didn’t mean she couldn’t still fake it. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re still full of crap.” She pushed past him, headed for the exit and her sloppily parked car.

  Damned if he didn’t follow—making no bones about it, right on her heels. The kind of persistence she’d want on her side if she needed help. From a man who—despite the way he’d nearly been blown up, despite the way Sam the hooker had dragged him around and Sam—almost—I Am had bossed him and resisted him, despite the way he’d so far been thwarted at every turn—didn’t show any of the classic signs of frightening temper or inter-gender control issues. Persistent, yes. He wanted what he wanted, all right. But even in these strange circumstances, he’d been willing to work with her to get it.

  And he’d kept enough of his wits about him to catch a glimpse of her most closely guarded secret.

  But just a glimpse. He couldn’t truly understand. He was fishing.

  He had to be.

  She unlocked the car door with one stab at the remote button—driver’s side only. And when she looked up she found Jethro on the other side of the car, his hand at the door. Waiting. Looking at her with an interesting combination of trust and demand. He’d cleaned up somewhat while she’d been questioning Madonna under the guise of a young nurse’s aide. His mustache looked soft and groomed; his hair no longer entirely disheveled, but obviously finger-combed. No dried blood in sight, just a few fresh-looking cuts and a bruised bump on the side of his nose.

  Waiting.

  She unlocked the door. Dammit.

  The car shifted under his weight as he joined her. “Thanks.”

  “I just don’t have time to argue with you,” she muttered, starting the car.

  “No, you could have simply driven off and left me there. I know you wanted to.” He tipped his head at her. “Although you do still have my gloves.”

  “And I like them,” she said, putting the car into reverse and threading her way out of the parking aisle. “It’s a good look. Very chick warrior. Just what I need right now.”

  “Do you?” He turned in the seat, putting his back to the door and straining the seat belt, so he could regard her more fully. “Now that I’m in the car and headed into chick warrior turf with you, is there anything more you’d like to tell me about your little talk with Madonna? Aside from how you got in there—in case you think I didn’t notice the way you glossed over that part the first time.”

  She made a face without thinking, and quickly smoothed it away. “I don’t care if you noticed. You don’t need to know.”

  He blew air through his mustache. “Strictly speaking, that’s true enough.” But he didn’t let her off the hook, not with his gaze riveted to her face as it was. He showed no concern for the fast corner she took. “But I want to know.”

  And again, she ignored it. Glossed it over with other answers he wanted—answers she might as well give him. At this point, the refuge houses were blown. “Madonna spent time in three houses before she hit the streets again. The first, you know about.” She slowed to take a red light, and glanced over at him. “This strikes me as a good time to mention again that too much time has passed for your sister to have been at the entry house,
and that you’re far, far better off now than if you’d spoken to the Captain about finding her.”

  Jethro snorted, unconvinced about that latter.

  “Not kidding,” Sam told him, and hit the accelerator for the green, abruptly enough to rock his head back.

  “Moot point, don’t you think?”

  “Only if you don’t try to find Lizbet again.”

  Silence. Then he cleared his throat. “Am I that transparent?”

  “More than. Besides, if you do happen to find her again, it’ll be long after your sister is out of this city. Once that happens, even the Captain doesn’t know where they go.”

  Another silence, while Sam took a short exit ramp to the city’s inner loop, four constantly shifting lanes of left-and right-hand exits that took great familiarity to navigate with any efficiency even with the paucity of cars on the road at this time of night. Then Jethro said, “That’s twice now. My sister. You believe me now?”

  “I’m staking my work with the underground on it.” The Captain would shun her if Jethro turned out to be Lizbet’s ex.

  The Captain might well shun her anyway. She should have left him in that hospital parking lot to call himself a cab and spend the rest of his life wondering where Lizbet had gone.

  “Why do you do it?” he asked abruptly. “Help them?”

  She looked at him in surprise. Why? Maybe because these women were doing what she’d never really been able to do—risk everything to find themselves. True, they had incentive she’d never encountered. She’d always been a little too comfortable with her life, even when she felt she never truly knew herself or what she wanted. She’d never quite found the wherewithal to leave behind what she knew in an effort to find out what she didn’t.

  As if she was going to say those words to this man. So she said simply, “Because I can,” which was also true—and also what she often told herself.

  “Why’s that?”

  She glanced at him, a truly bemused look. “You never give up, do you? Are you sure you’re not a reporter?”

  He grinned, an engaging combination with that mustache. “Just a humble silk-screening man,” he said. “A curious one. Why can you? What is it you can bring to them that no one else does?”

  “What would you do if the answer was ‘nothing’?”

  He gave it a moment’s thought. “I wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Why not?” She turned the tables on him just to be doing it.

  “Because of the way your voice sounded when you said that. Because I can. That meant something.”

  Chapter 4

  Sam almost stopped the car to look at him, surprised at the depth of his perception. Instead she found the exit she wanted and shot onto a street full of blinking construction sawhorses and signs, taking the curves of the rerouted street at a speed much faster than the posted limit. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll give you that. I work with a private investigator. I have the training to keep an eye on that house and to know who and what might be trouble. I can’t believe I missed that van.” And she could hardly tell him why. She could hardly say she’d been distracted by him, that she’d been the one dogging his footsteps these past two nights. She didn’t give him the time to ask. More turning the tables. “Now you tell me. We hardly ever get family members hunting up our refugees. Husbands and boyfriends, yes. Brothers, no. Why are you so determined to find your sister?”

  He hesitated, and she sensed it wasn’t out of reluctance, but in an effort to find the right words. Then he shrugged and said, “Because I should.”

  She looked at him, a quick glance as a streetlight flashed overhead. He meant it. And she might push for details, but for now she had what was important. The worry in his voice. The sense of connection behind those words. Maybe she’d done the right thing after all, opening that car door for him.

  Or maybe not. But she’d done it, and now they headed straight for one of the very secrets she wasn’t supposed to know, and certainly wasn’t ever supposed to tell. She glanced at him again, found him watching her…suppressed that frisson of awareness that he could somehow see through her. Literally, right through her guises.

  He couldn’t. No one ever had. But there was his camera, snugged against the seat and the center console of the car, and while she’d been caught on the fringes of a camera field-of-view once or twice, no one had been perceptive enough to notice the discrepancies—or they’d chalked it up to a processing mix-up. But this was a digital, and he’d already noticed the discrepancies.

  She’d have to find a moment to erase those pictures—turn them into a puzzling memory instead of damning evidence.

  A final turn and she cruised to the curb of a residential street. A few years of following people for her boss had built a detailed map of this city in her head; as soon as Madonna had given her the refuge house addresses, she’d known the neighborhoods, the fastest way to get there, the hindrances they might encounter. This particular neighborhood offered tree-lined sidewalks, maple trees in the yards, sparse fall landscaping around the houses. Nothing too fancy, just close-set homes with deceptively long backyards—and, if she remembered correctly, an active neighborhood watch program.

  “This one?” Jeth asked, looking intently out the window at the house in front of which they parked.

  “Two down,” she told him. “And you’re staying here.”

  He gave her his complete attention, mouth tugging to the side in dry amusement, dark gray-blue gaze riveted on her face.

  And there it was again, that unfamiliar feeling that he could truly see her. If anyone could, it would be this man. A terrifying thought, and a beguiling one. To be touched by someone who knew the real Sam….

  Except he was saying, “What makes you think so?”

  And in exasperation she responded, “You won’t find her here, Jeth. She’s gone. You’ve got to let her go.”

  He blinked in total lack of comprehension. “Let her go? This is my sister. I’m just supposed to forget she ever existed?”

  Typical. “It’s not about you. You’re supposed to accept that this was her choice, not yours.”

  “To leave her whole family behind? To spend the rest of her life living a lie? You must be kidding.”

  She unfastened her seat belt with more of a snap than she’d meant to, hand on the door latch. “Yes. Just exactly that. And I’m not kidding.”

  He shook his head, mirroring her actions and ready to get out of the car. “I’m not going to stop looking.” He pushed the door open; the overhead light came on.

  She grabbed the tough material of his jacket and yanked, catching him off balance. The door closed enough to turn out the light, but enough streetlight remained to see him, only inches away now, incredulous and furious.

  His hand closed over hers on his jacket. “You do this to people,” he said, grinding the words out in accusation. “You take them from their families. You turn their lives into a game of deceit.”

  “That’s right!” She snapped the words back at him, not trying to escape his grasp—just as he didn’t fight hers. Face-to-face, glare-to-glare. She whose whole life was nothing but one big game of deceit and the man who knew nothing but honesty. “By the time they reach us they’re desperate and some of them are one step away from dead. By the time they get to us, everyone else has failed them.”

  He jerked as though slapped; the anger turned to miserable guilt. Not a man who could hide his feelings any more than he could hide his nature. “I tried,” he said, and seemed to realize how tightly he held her injured hand, releasing his grip slowly to turn the contact into a lighter, more apologetic touch. “Dammit, I—”

  He looked away, took a shaky breath. She gave him the moment, and then said quietly, “I guess you probably did. But it wasn’t enough. For whatever reason it just wasn’t enough. She wouldn’t have come to us if it had been.” She uncrimped her fingers from his jacket, suppressing a wince, and then, after an uncertain hesitation, let them land on his arm in a more comforting touch
, however briefly. “Now she’s gone, Jeth. You don’t have to understand or accept it to make it so. But…I think you’d be a lot happier if you could.”

  He took another deep breath, looked back into her eyes, and said firmly, “Jethro.”

  She sat back. “You could be named an unpronounceable symbol—the man formerly known as Jethro—and you still wouldn’t come to that door with me.”

  He snorted as he, too, sat back, and then he gave his mustache a quick one-fingered stroke and said, “I’m not going to just sit here.”

  “Fine,” she said promptly, totally resisting the urge to let her fingers follow in the path of his. “I could use someone to watch the street. It’s the middle of the night—there shouldn’t be anyone else out here. So if there is, you can let me know.”

  “And who are we expecting?”

  She stumbled over telling him, but the word was already out on the street. No longer a secret of any kind. “Does the name Scalpucci sound familiar?”

  She’d succeeded in surprising him—she wasn’t sure if it was because of the name or simply because she’d answered his question. She nodded and said, “We’ve helped his wife. We’re pretty sure he’s behind the van bomb—he knew his wife wasn’t there, but it’s just like him to punish us for resisting him—and I bet his people are the ones who found Madonna. If you could find her—”

  “Gee. Thanks.”

  “Don’t even try to guilt me out on that one. You’re out of your league and you know it. I think that’s why—” why you make such an impact on me. But somehow she didn’t say it, even though she just that suddenly recognized it. He was out of his league and he wasn’t giving up. Unlike those in her early life who’d never made the effort to search out the real Sam—who were satisfied with the facade she gave them—he cared enough to keep trying.

  He waited.

  She pulled herself together and said, “The point is, Madonna told Scalpucci’s people—or someone’s people—about two of our houses. This is one of them. I’m not sure why it’s still so peaceful and quiet here…they should have been able to beat us here.”