Paula struggled to be free of Colt’s constricting arms. “Let go, I can’t breathe!”
“Be still, then!” Colt warned. His jaw scraped her cheek as he tipped his head, listening.
The silence in the crawl space was so deep, Paula’s racing heart was deafening to her ears. If not for the iron bands holding her upright, her legs might have melted beneath her as pounding feet and gruff voices rang through the house. Paula’s internal sirens screamed as cup boards banged open and drawers crashed to the floor. It seemed like years before the sounds of the frenzied search gave way to fleeing feet. A door slammed. Then silence.
The whisper of contents shifting in Colt’s pocket echoed like a shout down a tunnel. Paula fell to her knees on the dank earthen floor. A sob caught in her throat.
“Don’t move, not one inch!” Colt’s warning echoed in his hushed voice and hard glance. As he moved away from her, Paula huddled in her own embrace. Colt lifted the trapdoor and let himself out.
His stealthy footfalls moved through the apartment one floor above. Once again there was silence. Her ears ached, listening for him. At length, he came back and stood overhead. Gray eyes peered down at her from ridges and valleys of scarred tissue.
“They’re gone. Let’s get you out of there.” He flung the trapdoor into the kitchen.
Paula teetered on a paint can, but was hindered by her slim-fitting skirt.
Colt gripped her beneath the arms and hoisted her up and onto the floor. Paula perched there, with her feet dangling into the crawl space. She dragged trembling fingers through her hair and blinked back threatening tears.
“You missed one.” Colt indicated with a fingertip a cobweb still caught in her hair. “What have you done to yourself, anyway?”
“Done?”
“Your hair.”
“My hair?” blubbered Paula. “P-p-people breaking in! Sh-sh-shooting at us! Ransacking the house! And you ask about my hair?”
“Next time, you’ll scram when I tell you to.” He gripped her hands and set her unceremoniously on her feet.
“There won’t be a next time. Ever!” Paula replied. In the grips of aftershock, she stumbled out of the cramped pantry and into the kitchen where the contents of drawers littered the floor. “What am I s-supposed to t-tell Joy?”
“About what?” asked Colt.
Paula indicated with a wide-flung arm and a tear-dampened hand the chaos leading back to the bullet-riddled wall just beyond the kitchen threshold.
“Forget it. This has nothing to do with her,” he said curtly.
“How can it not? She was that close to losing us both! And then what?” Paula’s fear spilled into anger, an accumulation of moments, months, years. “Look at you! The symbol of American manhood, plastered on billboards all over the country, dodging bullets! Hiding in a rat hole. Reduced to a penniless, homeless…”
“Has-been?” he offered.
“I have a daughter to protect,” Paula snapped, defending the blunt edge of her tongue. “To think I was willing to talk about visitation. You can forget it now, not after this!”
“Listen!” he cut in, gripping her arm.
Paula froze. But the distant wail was sirens, not armed men returning.
Colt jerked an empty envelope from a pile of debris, scribbled an address and retrieved a stamp from a booklet in his billfold. He slipped the postcard inside the envelope, sealed it and moved with a limping gait toward the back door.
Paula’s jaw dropped. “Aren’t you going to talk to the police?”
“Later. It’s Monique’s house.” He shot the clipped explanation over his shoulder as he started away.
“So? We didn’t do the damage.”
He kept moving. Tears stinging, she balled her fists and took a parting shot. “Go on, then. Run. It’s what you do best. I’ll wait for the police.”
He wheeled around. “You sure you want to do that?”
Paula glowered. Mute. Arms crossed.
“Suit yourself.” His gruff words trailed after him as he turned out the door.
Paula watched Colt cross the tired grass with a limping, ground-eating stride. Her eyes leaked in the glaring September sun. She was alone with her shredded confidence and assailing fears.
What if the police don’t believe me? What if they think I broke in and made this mess? What if they arrest me? Dear God, what am I doing here?
Heaven was silent. Self-preservation battled years of trust in the wrinkle-proof principles of presumed innocence. “Colt? Colton! Wait up.” Paula darted out the door.
Colt heard her following, and slowed to let her catch up. “Where’s your car?”
“At the service station.” Paula fished her keys from her purse. Resuming his stride, Colt stretched out a palm for her keys. Paula withheld them. “What’s so urgent it won’t wait until we’ve talked to the police?”
“I need a mailbox.” He scanned the service station parking lot. “The white number yours?”
Paula nodded, then swiveled as a police car came shrieking around the corner.
“Easy does it. Just gawk like everyone else,” cautioned Colt. Feigning curiosity, he blended in with alarming ease.
A second police car screeched to a stop in front of the rambling apartment house. Two officers spilled out and raced for the house, guns drawn. A third officer warned bystanders to take cover while they secured the area.
Flight flew in the face of everything Paula believed in. Nearing the car, Paula heeded internal sirens and balked. “This is so wrong. Tell me what it’s about!” she pleaded.
“No time.”
“Condense it, then!” She stopped short, mind set. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you explain.”
Colt shoved his hand in his pocket, cocked his head and sighed. “I found a postcard that blows the alibi of a man who was questioned five years ago in connection with a murder and I don’t want it falling into the wrong hands. Satisfied?”
“What man?”
“Simon Burwell.”
“Who is he?”
“A high-profile Chicago real estate mogul and Monique’s ex-husband.”
“To you, I mean. Who are these people to you?” said Paula in quick staccato.
“I’m working undercover on a piece for Profile Magazine. This card is key to a story Simon Burwell can’t afford to have told. May we go now, please?”
“You’re writing again?” Paula’s surprise yielded to relief. But only briefly. Not ten feet away was his high-rise depiction, on a Wind, Water and Sky billboard. At a loss to understand how he could be penniless, she blurted out, “I know about the homeless shelter. I’m sorry, I don’t want to embarrass you. But Jake saw you there.”
“And nearly blew my cover with Monique,” muttered Colt.
Cover? Bewildered, Paula shaded her eyes in the sunlight. She looked up at the billboard, and back again. “So what are you saying—you were just pretending to be homeless?”
“That’s right.” Following her glance, Colt said, “Forget all that. It has nothing to do with any of this. C.J. took my place at Wind, Water and Sky years ago.”
C.J. was Colt’s brother. His name fell like a match over a candle wick. She’d seen pictures of him. He was the spitting image of Colt. Possibilities flickered. “You’re no longer modeling? C.J.’s the Voyager? All this time, you’ve been…”
“Writing,” Colt finished for her. “Now that we’ve clarified I’m still a man of means, could we go, please?”
“Your means are of no concern to me be yond how you relate to Joy.” Paula climbed behind the wheel. She slammed the car door, and reached for her seat belt as Colt took the passenger seat. “Give the postcard to the police, why don’t you?”
“What I write won’t be worth the ink to print if the local papers learn of this postcard before the magazine goes to press.”
“You have Monique’s permission to take it?”
“It’s in her best interests that I do. I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of it. But once you barged in, you stuck like a burr.”
“I wouldn’t have barged in if Joy hadn’t run away from home, looking for you!” retorted Paula.
“Okay, okay. Simmer down. One crisis at a time.” Leaning forward, Colt pointed. “Turn here at the corner, and pull over. There’s the drop box.”
Paula rolled to a stop at the curb. Colt climbed out and limped across the street to the mailbox.
The sun was in Paula’s eyes and the air-conditioning hadn’t yet cooled the car. She unbuckled her seat belt and reached into the back seat for the wide-brimmed hat she had donned for church that morning, then pushed thick red tresses up under the crown.
Colt mailed the envelope containing the postcard and crossed back to the car. Once underway again, Paula launched a fresh barrage of questions.
Colt rubbed a scarred temple. “What would you say to a time-out?”
“Oh, you’d like that, I guess. Give me a ride, help me dodge the police and don’t ask any questions.”
“That’s some attitude. You’ve changed.”
His eyes lingered on her hair.
Paula sniffed and countered, “Which way to the police station?”
He indicated the next corner. “Take a left at the light.”
Paula signaled for the turn. The engine sputtered as they rounded the corner. The car kicked and bucked and rolled to a halt at the curb. Paula moaned in frustration and slipped a palm to her forehead.
“Out of gas?” asked Colt.
She blushed at his tone.
“I don’t suppose you have a gas can in your trunk?”
“No.” Paula reached for her cell phone to call her auto club.
The air conditioner was low on freon. It had yet to overpower the trapped heat in the car. Paula hit the power window, and was scanning her automatic index for the auto club’s number when a light-colored sedan pulled out of traffic and parked behind her. The passenger climbed out.
Ear to the phone, Paula belatedly registered Colt’s warning. But before she could put up her window, a swarthy man in dark glasses approached the car.
“Need some help?” he asked.
Colt leaned across the seat and answered for her. “Thanks, but no. She’s on the phone with her auto club.”
The man reached through the lowered window and jerked the hat off Paula’s head. “Nice try,” he snapped, and grabbed her phone away.
He stuffed it in his coat pocket and reached again, saying, “Hand it over, Mrs. Burwell.”
Paula shrank from his clutching hands, with a panicky protest. “I’m not Mrs. Burwell. I don’t even know her!”
In a fluid movement, Colt was between Paula and her assailant, shielding her with his upper body, crushing her against the seat. “Listen to her. You’ve got the wrong woman!”
“Shut up and get away from her! Against the door!” With a right-handed pitch, the man tossed the hat into the back seat of the car. His left hand was in his jacket pocket. The fabric bulged, strained by what appeared to be a concealed weapon. Seeing Colt hesitate, he motioned, saying, “Don’t play the hero and she won’t get hurt. Up against the passenger door.
Now!” he added, as Colt hesitated, weighing his options. “Come on, come on! I don’t have all day.”
At length, Colt grudgingly shifted and came to rest against the passenger door. Without taking his eyes off Colt, the man yanked Paula’s car door open.
“Out!” So saying, he jerked her from the car. “We’re gonna regroup. Let Simon sort it out.”
“Good idea. Better yet, call him.” Colt bounded out the passenger’s side and circled the car, urging, “Get him on the phone. Ask him if his ex has a birthmark on the arch of her right foot. Kick off your shoe, babe. Show him.”
“Back off, Scar-face. I’m not going to warn you again!” So saying, Paula’s captor twisted her arm so hard, she squealed.
Colt charged the man, kicked the gun from his hand, and took him to the pavement. Paula fell with them, but rolled clear as her assailant scrambled to retrieve his gun. Colt intervened with pummeling fists. Paula staggered to her feet and booted the gun into the near lane of traffic.
“Help! Help! Police!”
Hands in her hair, Paula shrieked as the muscular goon caught Colt with a mean punch that sent him sprawling. The man pounced on Colt and showed every intention of beating him to a pulp. Traffic in the near lane screeched to a halt. The driver of the lead car slammed on her brakes and reached for a phone. The second lane of traffic stopped, too. A young man jumped out of a pickup truck and into the fray.
“Off-duty officer. Break it up. On your feet, sir.” He pulled Paula’s assailant off Colt and to his feet. “Spread-eagle. Hands on the hood of the car.” A strongly built fellow with a commanding manner, he instructed Paula, “Wait over there out of the street, ma’am, while I get some backup. Are you hurt, sir?” he asked Colt, as he reached for the pager on his belt.
“I’m okay,” said Colt.
His lip was bleeding. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “We ran out of gas. This guy pulls up behind us and jerks my wife out of the car, says she’s going with him.”
“You know him?” the young man asked Colt.
“No,” said Colt. “He mistook her for Simon Burwell’s wife.”
“The Simon Burwell? Burwell real estate?”
“That’s right. He and his buddy…”
Colt turned to indicate the driver of the light-colored sedan. As he did so, the car shot into reverse and then sped forward again. Sunday traffic was blocked. The sidewalk was wide open. Except for Paula. Brushing her skirt. Turning now, blue eyes going wide as the sedan shot up over the curb.
Colt gave a warning shout and vaulted for ward to push Paula out of harm’s way. Paula saw the car bulleting toward her. She flung her arms over her face and froze. One moment she teetered on the brink of doom, the next she was tumbling forward, propelled by Colt’s out thrust arms.
A sickening thud deadened the air as the on rushing car struck Colt and tossed him to one side. He came down on a low border of autumn flowers and landed in pine straw. Paula looked on in horror as the pale sedan sped down the walk and away, leaving Colt a long still shadow on the lawn.