Cry Uncle (35 page)

And that wasn’t much of a reason.

As soon as he got rid of Lizard, they’d talk
it out. Or make love. If the past was any indication, they’d
understand each other just fine once they had their clothes
off.

Why hadn’t she turned on any lights? he
wondered as he neared the house. The porch was black with shadows,
and he worried about tripping on the steps and jostling Lizard.
“Pam?” he called out—not too loudly, because he didn’t want to wake
the kid up.

Pamela said nothing.

When he was just a few yards from the bottom
step, his eyes adjusted to the gloom and he saw her—standing beside
a goon wearing a ski mask and leather gloves, and holding a gun to
her throat.

Joe froze. Above the gloved hand clamped over
her mouth, Pamela’s eyes glistened with terror. She stood very
still, locked inside the curve of the goon’s arm.

“
Don’t move,” the goon
ordered him.

“
I’m not moving.” Joe’s
voice came out a breathless croak.

“
No need to get you and the
little girl involved,” the goon explained. “Why don’t you go back
to your car and clear out, and Miss Hayes and I will take care of
business.”

Joe shifted his gaze to Pamela again. Besides
terror, he saw resignation in her eyes, and resolution. “Pam—”

She moved her jaw and mumbled something. The
goon lowered his hand to permit her to speak. “Just go,” she
whispered. “If you stay he’ll hurt Lizard.”

“
Pam—”

“
This is between the lady
and me,” the goon said reasonably. “Actually, it’s between the lady
and a friend of mine. You and the little girl have nothing to do
with it. Why don’t you get going, so I don’t have to hurt
you.”

“
Take Lizard and go,” Pamela
pleaded. “Just do as he says, Jonas. I don’t want anything to
happen to Lizard.”

Deep in Joe’s gut, something began to churn.
Pain, rage, dread, and a hefty dose of self-loathing at the
possibility that his phone call to the Seattle police—his distrust
of Pamela—had brought this creep to his doorstep. But he kept his
tone calm and even as he said, “Okay, we’re outta here.”

It agonized him to turn from Pamela, to tear
himself from her fearful gaze. What would she think of him, turning
his back on her? What would she think of him, walking away?

He had to consider Lizard. He couldn’t do
anything as long as he had his niece slumped over his shoulder.
Lizard’s safety was the most important thing. Joe was sure Pamela
would agree.

He strode back to the car in quick but
measured steps. His brain raced ahead at breakneck speed,
considering strategies, discarding them, wondering how in God’s
name he could save the woman in his life without jeopardizing the
girl in his life. Behind him he heard nothing more than the shrieks
of crickets. Usually he liked their song, but tonight it sounded
mocking.

He lowered Lizard gently onto the back seat
and closed the door. Glancing toward the porch, he saw the gunman
ushering Pamela down the steps. The two of them moved awkwardly,
since the gunman kept her pinned to his side with one huge gloved
hand, and pressed the gun into her neck with the other.

Joe slipped in behind the wheel and started
the engine. Pamela sent him a searing look, and he knew in that
instant that she despised him for abandoning her. He wanted to roll
down the window and remind her that he couldn’t have dropped Lizard
on the lawn and taken on an armed killer with his bare fists. He
wanted to beg her not to give up. He wanted to explain, as
rationally as the gunman had, that if anything happened to her he
would die.

Instead, he jammed his foot down on the gas
pedal, jerked the steering wheel to the left, and careened across
the front lawn, aiming straight at Pamela and the gunman and
praying that Pamela would be able to get out of his way in
time.

The sudden swerving of the car tossed Lizard
onto the floor. She awakened with a howl, then sprang to her feet.
“We’re driving on the grass!” she yelled.

“
Hush.” Joe forced his
concentration on the thug who held Pamela hostage. Instead of
releasing her, he was trying to drag her across the yard toward the
rhododendrons abutting the porch. Joe yanked the steering wheel the
other way, chasing the masked man. The car’s headlights offered
perplexing glimpses of trees and flowers. The tires bumped and
skidded on the grass.

The thug still had the gun, although he no
longer held it to Pamela’s neck. His long fingers circled her upper
arm as he dragged her away from the porch, toward the street. Joe
noticed the unfamiliar car parked at the curb.

He also noticed a few other cars on the
street. Some of his neighbors must be home. Joe slammed his fist
against his car horn, figuring it couldn’t hurt to rouse some
attention.

The sudden bleat of the horn startled the
gunman. He flinched, and Pamela at last wriggled free of his grasp.
Joe assumed she would flee, but he didn’t stop to follow her
progress. His attention was on the thug.

Lizard remained on her feet, clutching the
back of the front seat. “Blast the horn again, Uncle Joe! Hit the
guy! This is fun! Kill the sucker!”

“
You’re a blood-thirsty
little brat,” Joe muttered, although he shared her vindictiveness a
hundred percent. His fondest wish at that moment was to kill the
sucker.

The thug lunged toward his car. Joe dug his
heel into the gas pedal, gunning the engine and heading straight
toward the thug’s car. Frantic, the thug tried to climb up the side
of his car, but Joe plunged forward, closing his eyes an instant
before impact. Sure, he wanted to kill the sucker. But he wasn’t
sure he wanted to watch himself do it.

His car hit the thug’s with a loud crunch of
metal that flung Joe against the steering wheel, causing the airbag
to explode into his chest and the horn to blare into the night.
“Lizard?” he wheezed, wrestling with his breath. “Lizard, are you
all right?”

Her answer was a giggle of delight. “That was
awesome! Let’s do it again!”

Joe coughed a few times. “Not a chance,
toots. Let’s get out and check the damage, and see if I’m gonna get
charged with vehicular homicide.”

“
What’s vick-you-ler
home-side?” Lizard said, eagerly scrambling out of the
car.

“
You don’t want to know.”
Joe moved more slowly, mentally inspecting each limb and joint to
make sure he hadn’t done any serious harm to himself in the
collision. He was only slightly disappointed to discover, as he
emerged from his battered car, that the thug was alive, trapped
within the mangled chassis of his car and Joe’s. He was moaning,
though, and cursing a blue streak. His ski-mask was askew,
revealing the lower half of his face. A trickle of blood leaked
from the corner of his mouth. Joe took pride in that gruesome
achievement.

“
What the hell is going on?”
An irate male voice reached Joe from the street. Straightening up,
he noticed several neighbors swarming down the block to witness the
excitement.

“
Would somebody call the
police?” Joe asked, still sounding a bit breathless.

“
I already did,” Birdie
squawked. “This is how you celebrate?”

Lizard took Birdie’s question at face value.
“This was better than the party,” she squealed in delight. “Isn’t
it awesome?”

Joe heard the whine of a siren in the
distance. Assured that the thug wasn’t going to get away, he
staggered across the lawn in search of Pamela. He found her seated
on the porch steps, her head propped in her hands and her cheeks
stained with tears.

He dropped onto the step next to her, arched
his arm around her and drew her against him. A tremor of panic
seized him, then vanished. She was alive. He hadn’t lost her.

“
You okay?” he whispered
into her silky blond hair.

She sighed. “I threw up.”

“
I don’t blame
you.”

“
I thought...” A low sob
tore from her, and she covered her eyes with her hands as if she
didn’t want him to see her weep. “I thought you were really going
to go away and leave me.”

Joe tightened his hold on her. “Just because
that was what you told me to do? Since when do you think I’d
actually listen to you?”

She issued a soggy laugh. “I told you to
leave because I was afraid for Lizard. There was no reason for her
to die just because I was going to die.”

“
Well, if anyone came close
to killing her, it was me, not him. Looks like I did some major
damage to the lawn.”

“
The lawn looks beautiful.”
Pamela nestled closer to him. “And Lizard’s pretty tough. Tougher
than me, for sure.”

“
You’re the toughest woman
I’ve ever known,” Joe told her, closing both arms around her and
feeling her shiver in his embrace.

Bright red light pulsed across the front yard
as a police cruiser pulled to a siren-blaring halt behind the two
mangled cars. A police officer stalked up the front walk, and Joe
knew he was going to spend the next several hours answering
questions. The authorities would need to know what happened, who
the gunman was, who had sent him and why.

But the questions could wait for a few
minutes. Right now, Joe couldn’t imagine anything more essential
than holding his wife.

Chapter Sixteen

PAMELA SAT ON THE LEATHER couch in her living
room, weary after having given a full day of testimony in court.
Her feet hurt from the high heels she’d worn. Back in Key West,
she’d lived in sandals.

Forget about
back in Key West,
she
ordered herself. She was in Seattle, now. Home. Because the
District Attorney’s office had ghastly proof that Pamela’s life was
in danger, he’d insisted that the court schedule Mick Morrow’s new
trial immediately, and Pamela had returned to testify. She supposed
she would have to fly back to Florida to testify against the hit
man Mick had hired to get her, but she couldn’t think that far
ahead.

She would have to. Decisions had to be made.
She had to get her life under control.

Not tonight, though. Tonight, after having
seen her foe in court, having spoken out against him, having spent
too much time wondering whether her life would have been better if
she’d never opened her mouth in the first place... She wasn’t going
to do anything but rest.

Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony swelled into the
room from the speakers of her sound system. The glass of milk she
sipped made her stomach churn. The glass-topped tables gleamed from
their recent cleaning; her knickknacks bespoke taste and class, and
as soon as her parents had heard she was returning to Seattle,
they’d gone to the condominium and replaced all her dead plants
with live ones.

A tear seeped through her lashes when she
realized how much she missed the chaos of life with Lizard, of
spilled cereal, smeared finger-paint and girlish giggles. And the
chaos of life with Joe, whose soul she could never read and whose
heart she could never trust—except that he’d saved her life.

She’d left the island the day after the
attack. The police in Key West had alerted the D.A. in Seattle, and
he had told to Pamela to come west as soon as she could. He felt
the Seattle police could protect her better than the Key West
police had. Sure they could, she’d thought—now that they no longer
considered her paranoid and hysterical.

She’d spent her last Key-West night in bed
with Joe, not making love but simply being held. He was so steady,
so comforting as she trembled beside him, fighting anguish and
nausea and waves of dread. When she thought about how close she’d
come to dying, she’d burst into tears. When she thought about how
Joe had saved her life, she’d burst into tears. It had been a very
wet night, not the least bit romantic, yet when by the time she’d
finally drifted off to sleep she’d been absolutely convinced she
loved Jonas Brenner.

Which made it all the more imperative that
she leave as soon as possible. She had hoped that once she was back
in Seattle, the physical distance between her and Joe would help
her to regain her perspective. Just because he’d saved her life
didn’t mean she had to love him. If a policeman had saved her life,
or a doctor, would she feel obliged to love them, too?

It helped to remember that before the hit man
had shown up on Joe’s front porch, Joe hadn’t asked her to stay and
make a real marriage with him. What he’d done hadn’t been done out
of love. He’d saved her life only because he was a decent guy with
a few heroic impulses, the same heroic impulses that had compelled
him to take in his niece and fight for her.

Heroism wasn’t the same thing as love.

But meanwhile...

She felt like hell.

Don’t think about
it
, she ordered herself.
Get through the trial, and then you can plan the
rest of your life.

Through the lilting strings of the allegro
first movement, she heard the doorbell ring. In the week she’d been
back, a few neighbors had dropped by to see how she was doing. Her
colleagues at Murtaugh Associates had sent her flowers, and Richard
Duffy had phoned to tell her the strip-mall project was coming
along nicely. She’d spent several evenings at her parents’ house
and a day reviewing her testimony with her attorney and the D.A. By
now, she figured, anyone who had wanted to welcome her home would
have done so.

She stood, smoothed the sash of her silk robe
around her waist and crossed barefoot to the door. Peeking through
the peep hole, she saw more flowers. She wondered why the doorman
hadn’t accepted the delivery for her, or signaled her through the
intercom that she had a visitor.