Totally naked, Maddie crawled out of bed quietly, keeping a sleeping Dylan in her peripheral vision as she sneaked across the room. She lifted Dylan’s sport coat off the chair where he’d placed it last night, then delved her hand into the inside pocket. All the coercing in the world hadn’t persuaded Dylan to tell her when and where he would meet the informant tonight—and she was damned and determined to find out. Once she knew the particulars, she could follow him, at a discreet distance, of course; and she’d take Gerri Nightingale and her big gun along with her.
Maddie removed the hand-printed note, scanned it quickly, then replaced it inside Dylan’s jacket. The rodeo arena, outside of town. Eleven o’clock tonight. Undoubtedly there were no events scheduled tonight, so the place would be deserted. A quiet, private meeting area, with only one road in and out, easy to check for a setup. But anyone could come in afterward or get there hours before to set up an ambush.
Dylan turned over and groaned. Maddie laid his jacket exactly where it had been, then tiptoed toward the bed. Dylan groaned again, reached out and ran his hand over her side of the king-size bed. She made it halfway back to bed before he opened his eyes and looked around the bed and then around the room.
“What are you doing way over there?” As he rose into a sitting position, the sheet dropped to his waist, revealing a broad chest, dusted with curly brown hair, a washboard-lean belly and large muscular biceps. Fully clothed, Dylan Bridges was drop-dead gorgeous. Naked, the man had no equal.
“I…uh…I was trying to be quiet so I wouldn’t wake you.” She stood in the middle of her huge bedroom suite, naked and not the least embarrassed. After all, Dylan had seen every inch of her. Actually he’d touched and tasted every inch of her.
“Just where were you going like that?” As he scanned her from head to toe, his gaze lingered on her breasts.
Maddie giggled nervously. “I was going to hop in the shower, then—”
“Why don’t you come back to bed?” He patted the empty place on her side of the bed, then reached over on the nightstand to remove a condom from the box he’d purchased yesterday.
“You have a one-track mind, Mr. Bridges.” She sauntered toward the bed, letting her hips sway provocatively.
As she neared the edge of the bed, she said, “Morning, noon and night, all you think about is sex.”
He reached out, grabbed her wrist and dragged her toward him across the rumpled sheets. She went willingly, assisting him gladly. He kicked the covers to the foot of the bed, hauled her up and on top of him. She straddled his hips and pressed her femininity against his erection.
“How about a hard, fast ride on a bucking bronc?” He caressed her naked buttocks.
“Sounds like the perfect way to start the day.” After lifting herself up on her knees, she positioned her body, reached down, circled his sex and drew him up and into her. She slid over him, easing the width and length into her sheath. When she had taken him fully inside her, she moved up and down, placing the friction of their rubbing bodies precisely where it aroused her. Easing forward so that her breasts rested near his mouth, Maddie smiled at Dylan.
He lifted his head, opened his mouth and took one begging nipple between his lips. Maddie moaned. He shifted back and forth from one breast to the other, one sensitive tip to the other. And all the while he rubbed her hips and buttocks, gently guiding her.
She rode him at a steady pace, allowing the tension to build gradually, but eventually the sensations grew so intense that she lost control. Riding him harder and faster, she pounded frenetically until the vibrations screeched and clawed and exploded, sending shock-waves through her body. When her climax tapered off to tingling remnants, she fell limply on top of him. Dylan kissed and stroked her as the eruptions subsided, then he flipped her onto her back and hovered over her. While she lay beneath him, drowsily sated, he took her fully, completely and found his own release after several quick, hard thrusts. He shuddered and shook, then collapsed on top of her.
Maddie thought she heard the telephone ringing, but a blissfully sweet buzz still hummed inside her head. A loud knock on the bedroom door aroused her from the dreamy aftermath.
“Maddie,” Thelma Hewitt called. “Telephone for Mr. Bridges. It’s Detective O’Brien.”
Dylan rolled off Maddie and onto the bed. “Thanks, Thelma,” Dylan said.
“Oh, and by the way, Gerri is eating breakfast. She loves my chocolate chip pancakes, and there’s enough for everybody.”
“We’ll be there in a few minutes.” Dylan scooted to the side of the bed, reached over and lifted the receiver from the brass-and-crystal French telephone. “Bridges here.”
Maddie slid across the bed, came up on her knees behind Dylan and, pressing her breasts against his back, draped her arms around his neck.
“Yeah, how about that?” Dylan swatted at Maddie’s playful fingers twisting and twining his chest hair. “Who knows? Uh-huh. Thanks for calling, Hart.”
The minute he replaced the receiver, he yanked Maddie off his back and into his arms. Giggling, she stared at him mischievously.
“Why did Hart call?” she asked.
“To tell me that the gun that disappeared from the crime lab has miraculously reappeared.”
Maddie sobered, her playful attitude dissolving into seriousness. “Which means you’re going to meet that guy tonight and give him another fifty thousand, doesn’t it?”
“That was our deal,” Dylan said. “I give him fifty thousand and he returns the gun. That’s been accomplished. Now he’ll meet with me and for another fifty thousand, he’ll give me the information I need to prove who killed my father.”
“And you won’t let me go with you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“And you won’t tell Hart and let him—”
“We’ve been over this before, honey. No police. I’m not taking any chances of scaring off this guy. I think he’s nervous, probably frightened of the killer.”
“How do you know that he’s not the person who killed the judge? Maybe, for some reason, he wants to kill you, too.”
Dylan kissed her, then lifted her to her feet as he stood. “Put on some clothes. I’m hungry for Thelma’s chocolate chip pancakes.”
He had dismissed her concerns as if they were nothing, but she knew better. All right, let him go off by himself to the rendezvous at the rodeo arena tonight at eleven. She had every intention of being there no more than five minutes behind him. She and Gerri and Gerri’s gun.
After promising to phone her the minute his meeting with the mysterious informant ended, Dylan left Maddie’s condo around nine, money-filled gym bag in tow, then drove to his father’s house on Royal Avenue. Just in case Maddie decided to follow him, he wanted to catch her well in advance of the actual meeting. But much to his relief, he saw no signs of being followed by anyone. He stayed at the house, watching some special documentary on the animal channel about the vanishing mustangs in the American West. At ten-thirty, he locked up, got in his rental car and headed out of town.
Although the road leading up to the rodeo arena and barns was dark, the arena itself was well-lit. He parked the car, removed the gym bag and made his way around toward the back gate, the arranged rendezvous spot. A hundred grand would be a small price to pay if it bought him the name of the bastard who’d killed his father. With a name and the right information, the police could bring the guy in for questioning—and check his palm print against the one they’d found on the murder weapon. And it would be all the better if the person he was meeting could throw in a little substantial evidence, along with a name and the info.
The back gate lay in shadows, but there was enough light for Dylan to check his watch. Ten-fifty. He was early.
Minutes dragged by, each seeming like a hour. Finally Dylan heard the roar of a car’s motor. His heartbeat thundered inside his head. He felt inside his jacket pocket for the fifteen-round 9mm Ruger that he’d kept in the glove compartment of his Porsche. He’d like to think that he wouldn’t need a weapon, but he wasn’t fool enough to walk into a situation like this unarmed. He had no idea what type of person he was dealing with or what the outcome of their meeting might be.
Vigilant, on alert and psyching himself up for whatever happened, Dylan waited. A couple of minutes before ten, a short, wiry man in his late twenties crept around the fence, but hesitated a good thirty feet away from Dylan. From what Dylan could make out in the semidarkness and from the distance between them, the man appeared to be Hispanic. But when he spoke, he had no accent.
“You got the money?” the guy called.
Dylan lifted the gym bag and stuck it out in front of him.
The man glanced nervously all around him. “You came alone like I told you to do, didn’t you?”
“I’m all alone,” Dylan replied.
“Put the gym bag down and kick it toward me.”
“Before I get my information?”
“I get the money, then you get the information.”
Dylan nodded. The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up. Something wasn’t right. He could feel it in his gut. He hesitated and listened, but heard nothing. Still, he sensed trouble.
“What are you waiting for?” the guy yelled.
“Did you come alone?” Dylan rubbed his hand over his jacket. The Ruger was only a second away, if he needed it. Thank God he knew how to use a gun. When he and a couple of Dallas business associates had taken up target practice as a way to relieve work-related tension, Dylan had never imagined the day would come when he might be forced to defend himself with a pistol.
“Hell, man, you think I’d bring along somebody? I’m trying to get enough money to get away…far away from Mission Creek and the guy who hired me to steal the gun he used to kill your papa.”
“What man hired you? And just who are you? How were you able to take a gun from a police crime lab?”
“I don’t answer no questions. Not before I get my money.”
Dylan set the gym bag on the ground, then kicked it forward a good five feet.
“Now, you back up,” the man told him. “And keep backing up until I tell you to stop.”
Dylan obeyed, and while he was backing away, he sensed danger all around him. The man made his way slowly and cautiously toward the gym bag. He kept glancing right and left, as if he expected to be jumped at any minute. Dylan understood the guy’s fears; he was pretty jittery himself.
Just as the guy reached down for the gym bag, Dylan heard a sound. A couple of seconds later he realized what he’d heard. A gunshot. The bullet ripped through the nighttime quiet and hit its mark, straight into the informant’s chest. Dylan dove behind a huge, metal Dumpster, yanked the Ruger from his jacket and waited. Footsteps. Breathing. God, maybe it was his own breathing he heard. But the footsteps were coming closer.
“You’re next, Bridges,” a voice said. “We were both idiots to trust that son of a bitch Torrez. I paid him a thousand bucks to retrieve my Sig and what does he do when I tell him to take it to Corpus Christi and dump it in the Gulf? He keeps it and sells it to you. Lucky for me that I got buddies everywhere, keeping their eyes and ears open. And even luckier for me that Torrez’s whore was more afraid of me than of him.”
Whoever this guy was he was a cocky bastard. But he wasn’t completely stupid. He hadn’t shown himself. And he’d suddenly gotten awfully quiet. Did that mean he was moving toward Dylan? Was there any way he could get behind him?
Dylan heard another noise. A car? Damn, if this guy had arranged for backup, Dylan was in trouble.
“You got help coming?” the man asked, and Dylan realized the guy was still in front of him somewhere and that whoever had just driven up to the arena wasn’t working for the enemy.
“Could be.” But who? Dylan wondered. Could Maddie have called Hart and told him—Told him what? She didn’t know the details of this meeting.
Dylan glanced all around him. Two shadows, one tall and one short, appeared from the right, and they were getting closer and closer. Whoever it was, they were walking directly into the line of fire.
Then everything happened at once. He recognized the late arrivals: Maddie Delarue, with her bodyguard at her side. Her gun drawn, Gerri was ready to fire. Just as Dylan started to yell out a warning, the guy who’d already shot one person tonight fired his weapon, which missed its target. Gerri Nightingale knocked Maddie out of the way and took the gunman’s second bullet. Maddie screamed. Dylan ran out of hiding when Gerri hit the ground, firing his Ruger repeatedly and racing toward Maddie. He had to get her out of harm’s way. Damn it, what the hell was she doing here? How had she known where he’d be?
Just as Dylan reached out to grab Maddie, the gunman got off another shot. One that hit its target.