LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Don’t talk about Gavin to me.”

      “Lyle was in it up to his eyeballs,” Beau continued, glossing over her sudden anger. “But no one could prove it.” And then the jerk had gotten a promotion. Life wasn’t fair.

      Aubrey got up and paced. Beau caught a whiff of her fragrance, perfume, or maybe just shampoo or lotion. Whatever it was, he liked it—way too much. He’d thought Aubrey Schuyler was long out of his system. But seeing her again had reawakened cravings that really weren’t useful at the moment. In fact, they’d never been useful, except to distract him from sleep on lonely nights.

      “If some guy was threatening Patti, why didn’t she call the cops?” he asked, following Aubrey with his eyes. She moved nice. He liked the play of muscles beneath her snug denim shorts, and the way he could see her shoulder blades whenever she lifted her mass of curls off her neck.

      “She doesn’t want the police involved, and I don’t blame her. After all her arrests and whatnot, she has no reason to feel good about cops. Anyway, social services keeps a close watch on her, and she’s worried they’ll take her baby away from her.”

      “Maybe they should.”

      “No,” Aubrey said fiercely. “Patti doesn’t deserve that. She’s grown up a lot since you last knew her. She’s off drugs, working and paying her bills. She’s trying really hard to be a good mother, and she loves Sara. It’s just that her past is catching up with her.”

      “A past is a pretty hard thing to escape,” Beau said. Then he sighed, hating what he was about to say. “You want me to try to track down that phone call for you?”

      “Lyle said—”

      “Lyle might or might not get around to it. Besides, he has to follow certain rules, protecting privacy and all that. I don’t.”

      “You can do that? Trace a call?”

      “Not me, but Lori Bettencourt. Her father was one of the founders of First Strike.”

      “Glenn Bettencourt? The one who was killed last year?”

      “Yeah. Lori’s father didn’t want her anywhere near the agency, but now that he’s gone, she’s there every day, begging for scraps. Ace—he’s the guy in charge now—got her started skip-tracing. She was a quick study, and pretty soon she was on the payroll. She already had a background in computers, but now she can rival any hacker out there. She’ll find out who made that call.”

      “Let’s make it happen, then.”

      “One rule, though.”

      Aubrey sighed. “I knew this was too easy.”

      “If I help you out, you do what I say. No more staying in sleazy motels with crummy locks and a clerk who could be bought for a pack of cigarettes.”

      “What alternative do you suggest?”

      “We’ll work out something. Maybe you could stay with Lori.”

      Aubrey wrinkled her nose at that, but she didn’t object.

      “Bring your bag, you won’t be coming back here. But we’ll leave your car, on the off chance it’ll throw someone off the scent.”

      Aubrey looked as though she wanted to object to the way Beau had suddenly taken control, but again, she didn’t. She must be plenty scared, Beau thought grimly, to throw in her lot with him and let him call all the shots.

      Once they were in his car, Beau put the top down. The sun’s full heat beat down on them, but it was worth it because he got to watch out of the corner of his eye as Aubrey tried to control her windblown curls.

      “If you’re able to track this guy down, what will you do with him?” she asked. “Will you turn his name over to Lyle?”

      “Hah! No, I’ll handle him myself. Once he realizes he’s not dealing with defenseless women, that you and Patti have an ex-cop on your side, he’ll be a bit more patient about getting his money.”

      “Do you really think so?” Aubrey asked hopefully.

      “Sure. The guy sounds like a bully, and bullies run and hide when anyone stronger than they are comes around.”

      Aubrey flashed him a grateful smile, and it just about melted his insides. When was the last time Aubrey had actually smiled at him?

      Hell, he really needed to pull his mind out of the past. Aubrey had been his first real crush, the first girl whose opinion of him had ever mattered. She’d just turned fourteen, and she was all legs and budding breasts and lips that were unconsciously pouty. He’d casually mentioned to Gavin he might like to take Aubrey out, now that he had a driver’s license and an old wreck of a car. Gavin had pushed him up against a wall and threatened to kill him if he so much as looked at his sister. It was the first time Gavin had ever directed his temper toward Beau, and it had unnerved him. Not that he was afraid, exactly. He probably could have beat Gavin to a pulp. But he didn’t like seeing that side of his buddy, his best friend. Rather than provoke that sleeping beast inside Gavin again, Beau had limited himself to covert looks at Aubrey—and an active fantasy life. There were plenty of other girls who wanted to ride in his car, he’d reasoned.

      They rode the rest of the way in silence, and Beau forced himself to focus on Patti’s predicament. He’d known Patti well when they were kids, all of them hanging out together. As Gavin Schuyler’s best friend, he’d been treated practically as one of the family, and he had always been welcome at the Schuylers’ house as well as at the Clarendon home—a mansion, really. Wayne Clarendon came from old money, and he didn’t hesitate to flaunt it.

      Once Beau left the police force, though, his relationship with Gavin, and hence the entire family, had grown tense, and he hadn’t seen much of them after that. What he did remember of Patti, though, was a weak, self-indulgent young woman prone to histrionics and a master of manipulation. Aubrey had always been vulnerable to her cousin’s hijinks, because Aubrey was kind and willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.

      Everyone except him.

      Aubrey had said Patti was more mature now, but Aubrey tended to see the best in everyone, even when it wasn’t deserved. Why she wanted to believe the worst about him was no mystery—he’d shot her brother, after all. But he wished she’d cut him a break.

      Beau wheeled the Mustang into a parking space in front of a run-down shopping center in one of the worst parts of town.

      “Why are we stopping here?” Aubrey asked with some alarm.

      “This is it.”

      Aubrey followed his gaze to a tattered blue awning that featured First Strike in barely discernible white letters. Next to it was the image of a coiled snake, ready to strike. The office itself was housed in perhaps twenty feet of storefront, with steel bars covering windows streaked so dirty she couldn’t see a thing inside. On one side was Bloodgood’s Pawn Shop. On the other was Taft Bail Bonds.

      She made no move to get out of the car.

      “Aubrey, what’s the holdup?”

      She shook herself. What had she expected, anyway? Beau Maddox wasn’t Remington Steele. “Coming.”

      Inside it was worse than Aubrey had feared. The office was bigger than it appeared from the outside, narrow and deep. A battered reception desk sat near the door, unoccupied at the moment, but a half-full bottle of Dr Pepper sitting on it indicated the occupant wasn’t far away. A couple of other desks were arranged haphazardly around the main room, all of them messy but currently unused. In one corner was a home gym—a weight bench and a couple of machines with torn, blue-sparkle vinyl upholstery. The floor was partially covered with nasty blue indoor-outdoor carpeting, except where the concrete floor showed through huge rips and holes. The walls had been flat white once upon a time. Now they were dingy with fingerprints and God-knew-what.

      A huge garbage can near the exact center of the room

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