Daring Time (33 page)

A minute later he spied Jim Donahue's unmistakable tall, bulky form entering the open forum of the museum with a platinum blonde on his arm.

His spine tingled when his gaze flickered to Hope and then targeted Jim Donahue again.

Ramiro and Gail hadn't reached her yet and she still sat alone at the table.

Alone and vulnerable, Ryan realized with rising discomfort. Donahue and his date were being shown to a special reserved table by a gray-haired man. Apparently being a
woman-hating, white slaving, rotten-to-the-core, vicious, kidnapping scoundrel
got you some special treatment at an affair like this, Ryan thought with grim amusement, picturing Hope as she animatedly enumerated Donahue's faults.

What had he been thinking allowing Hope to be in the near vicinity of Donahue?

Ramiro and Gail reached Hope and he breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, the tingle of warning in his backbone remained.

TWENTY-FIVE

Hope beamed at Ramiro and Gail when they returned from their dance and joined her at the table. "You two dance beautifully together."

Ramiro double pumped his eyebrows at Gail, who both rolled her eyes and blushed at once.

"Sorry I can't treat you to my smooth moves at the moment, Hope. Duty calls."

"That's all right," she assured Ramiro. "I'm sure I wouldn't be very good at it."

"You don't like to dance?" Gail asked conversationally as she sat down. Ramiro, Ryan and her had agreed it would be best to tell as few people as possible about Hope's anachronistic existence in
I
the twenty-first century, so Gail wasn't in on the secret.

"The type of dancing I was taught is a bit more—formal."

Ramiro flashed his white teeth in a happy grin and tapped the table twice. "Time to James Bond it, beautiful ladies."

"He's very funny," Hope said even though she had no idea what Ramiro meant. They both watched him walk away with a bounce in his step.

"That's one way to describe hinu"

Hope met Gail's eyes and they both laughed. She listened in rapt fascination for the next half hour as Gail expounded on the thrills and doubts of courting Ramiro Menendez. It shocked her to hear how openly her new acquaintance talked about sex.

"But he's so damned cheesy sometimes, you know? If it weren't for the fact that he's phenomenal in bed, I wouldn't put up with his Don Juan act. Don't you dare tell him I told you that, though. He's got a gargantuan head as it is. But then again, he is cute, isn't he?"

Gail mused with a small smile as she took a sip of something called a martini. She didn't seem to notice Hope's dazed expression of wonder. "Speaking of which, how did you do it, girl?"

"Uh ... do what?"

"Every woman at the station would kill to have Ryan Daire stare at her like he does you.

He looks like he's going to
eat you alive."
Hope's brows crinkled in confusion when Gail patted her hand over her heart frantically and then waved her face as though she'd overexerted herself. "Just seeing that look got me all hot and bothered and it wasn't even
aimed
at me. You lucky, lucky girl. So . .. what's the verdict?"

"Verdict?" Hope asked, completely at a loss.

"What's Daire like in bed? Jenny Martin from the organized crime unit said he was
amazing.
She told me she was addicted to the sex with him, you know? But Daire is never forthcoming on a long-term supply. So is it true he tends to be
controlling!"
Gail asked with a knowing grin.

Hope stared, mouth agape. Her cheeks flooded with heat. It was one thing to be joyful that women had progressed so much in claiming their sexuality but quite another to suddenly be chatting casually with a virtual stranger about a topic that Hope's culture considered not only extremely intimate, but taboo under these circumstances.

And as far as the rest, Miss
Jenny Martin
better be prepared to expire from her addiction, because she was never,
ever
going to touch Ryan Vincent Daire again if Hope had her way about it!

Fortunately Ramiro saved her from having to respond to Gail when he approached the table.

"Daire's leaving. He wanted me to let you know," Ramiro said softly when he perched at the end of his chair.

"What happened?" Gail asked in an undertone, allowing the swelling music of the orchestra and the crooning singer to muffle their voices for anyone but themselves. Hope had come to understand that although Gail wasn't officially "on the Donahue case," as she'd put it, her work in the research lab made her aware of the generalities of what was occurring tonight.

Ramiro shook his head slightly, his dark brown eyes making a casual-seeming surveillance of the room.

"Something's going down. If it screws up this operation, I'm gonna be 'roid-rage-caliber pissed off, too. Before Chirnovsky had the chance to get Donahue to talk, Gutierrez got a call. He said something was arriving and Donahue ordered Chirnovsky to go to the Sweet Lash."

"The Sweet Lash," Hope murmured. Ramiro met her eyes and she knew he was thinking what she was—that Ryan had predicted Diamond Jack Fletcher's old brothel might be involved somehow tonight.

"Yeah. Crenshaw ordered Ryan to the Sweet Lash in the mobile unit since Ryan was the one who warned him this might happen."

Gail swung her long blonde hair over her shoulder and glanced to the right of her at the same time. "But Donahue is still here."

"Yeah. So are a couple of his boys. All we can hope for is that Donahue relocates to his nightclub and Chirnovsky can get him to talk before the warrant for covert recording expires at midnight. If not, all this tonight will have been for nada."

"Well, shit," Gail muttered in sympathy. She picked up her evening bag from the table. "I need to go to the little girls' room. Care to join me, Hope?"

Hope shook her head. Ramiro asked if she'd mind if he made a circuit of the room and she assured him she was fine. Once she sat alone, however, she became hyperaware of the area just behind her—the place where Gail had just covertly looked over her shoulder and said
but Donahue is still here.

She couldn't seem to stop herself. It was just like when she was little and her friend Fanny shrieked
"don't look"
at some childhood horror like a huge, smashed spider.

Hope had to look.

Her breath caught in her lungs when she twisted around and her gaze landed dead center on Jim Donahue. For one thing, he looked very similar to his former self—same dark hair and large, bold features going to fat. He sat at a larger round table than the rest at the edge of the gathering with two men and a blonde woman. Beady, cold eyes ran over her body speculatively just like they had several nights ago when Hope lay naked beneath a thin sheet—or 102 years ago, however you wanted to look at it.

And just like then, Hope shivered.

Gail returned and drank another martini. Hope was distracted from the unpleasant feeling of Jim Donahue's stare on her back by a steady stream of men asking Gail and her to dance. The feeling was only caused by her overactive imagination, anyway. Why would Donahue be singling
her
out of the crowd?

Ramiro gave one of their potential dance partners a fulminating look when he returned to the table. The man beat a hasty retreat, undoubtedly aware of Ramiro's gaze burning a figurative hole through his back.

He gave Gail a quick kiss. "Gotta go."

"Yeah, I saw him leaving," Gail whispered. Hope didn't have to ask who they were talking about. She'd seen Jim Donahue's date putting on her fur wrap earlier and Jim accompanying her through the crowd to the exit.

Gail sighed dispiritedly a few minutes after Ramiro left.

"Are you ready to leave, Hope? You don't look like you're having much fun, and both Ramiro and Ryan are gone now. It's not like I want to dance with any of these yahoos."

Despite her cavalier attitude Hope suspected Gail liked Ramiro very much. She agreed, also feeling the flatness of the affair now that Ryan was no longer here.

"If you could point me to the ladies' lounge first, we can be on our way," she told Gail.

Hope had to restrain herself from pausing at every exhibit she encountered as she made her way through the main floor of the museum. She briefly wondered if she'd misunderstood Gail's directions when she saw how dark the staircase was that led into the basement. But she saw bright light at the other end so she ventured on, relieved to see the sign for the ladies' lounge to the right when she reached the bottom. She passed machines that looked like they held children's toys and an exhibit called McDonald's that had an iron barricade blocking it while the museum was officially closed. The corridor where she walked appeared to stretch the entire length of the enormous facility.

The silence was broken by two young women talking animatedly as they exited the ladies' lounge. Hope heard their laughter echo in the high-ceiling, marble-tiled corridor as. she entered the largest lounge she'd ever seen in her life. Instead of individual water closets there were perhaps fifty or more narrow stalls. Hope pushed on one of the doors and peered in curiously.

She finally shrugged and entered. Obviously the Field Museum needed to be prepared for gigantic crowds, although apparently she was the lounge's sole occupant at present.

Once she'd used the toilet and determined that the Field Museum toilet paper was noticeably less soft than either Ryan's or Eve's, Hope made her way to the sinks and mirrors in the lounge.

After washing her hands she glanced into the mirror. She inhaled sharply when she saw a man with a dark complexion and black hair next to her own visage. He gave a grin that hardly connoted amusement to Hope's bewildered awareness.

"Good evening. My name's Manuel Gutierrez."

Hope's anxiety escalated a hundredfold when he raised his hand next to her head and something metallic slithered between his fingertips. She stared in amazement at her silver locket. She'd last seen it in the year 1906 ... in the hand of Diamond Jack Fletcher.

"Jim Donahue asked me to show you this for some reason, miss. Do you know him?" the man asked in a hoarse, accented voice.

"No," Hope replied as she began to edge away from the sink and the man. But he reached up and grabbed both of her shoulders in a strong grip. Hope lunged but he pulled her back in front of him with a hard jerk. Despite her growing fear, his cold eyes held her gaze in the mirror.

"Well, he seems to know you. And he specifically asked me to bring you to him so the two of you could discuss your acquaintance."

Hope twisted wildly in order to escape, but Gutierrez cocked his fist and struck her temple.

Her knees sagged. The room dipped and swayed. She started to scream but Gutierrez covered her mouth.

"Let's be on our way, sweetheart. I know a back entrance, which is a good thing, because I think you've had a little too much to drink," Hope heard him say sarcastically.

She stumbled precariously alongside him as he held her against his side and forced her out of the lounge. He pulled and dragged her down the empty hall, cursing in Spanish when Hope used her legs to resist him and then staggered frantically to regain her balance when he jerked her hard.

Abruptly Gutierrez shoved her down a darkened side corridor. She slipped on the marble tiles as she attempted to twist away from him. Damn these high heels Ryan's mother had given her to wear.

Ryan.
He was going to be so irritated with her.

But she had no more opportunity to worry about Ryan at the moment because Gutierrez pushed her front side into the wall. Hope opened her mouth to scream but then felt the unmistakable hard barrel of a gun push against her spine.

"Keep your mouth shut or I'll shoot you. I don't care if Dona-hue wants to nail your ass or marry you. There's
nothing
I hate more than a screaming, whining woman, do you understand?" He sounded so hard and hateful that she had no problem comprehending him whatsoever. She nodded, wincing when he ground the pistol further into flesh. "I'm glad we got all that settled. Now . .. you're going to walk on your own two feet out that door at the end of this hallway."

When he released her Hope slowly stepped back from the wall, her legs trembling like they were made of rubber. A hand at the back of her neck gave her a hard nudge toward the door in the distance.

TWENTY-SIX

Ryan heard a tapping noise and flipped back the lock on the van door. Ramiro clambered in wearing his dark blue Chicago Police Department tactical coat in place of his tuxedo jacket. The two agents wearing headsets and sitting amongst all the surveillance equipment looked up.

"Menendez, Alvarez and Myerson," Ryan said perfunctorily.

Alvarez and Myerson nodded once before they went back to focusing on their work.

They were parked in the driveway of a darkened house that had access both to the alley behind the Sweet Lash and the street on the next block.

"What's happening?" Ramiro hissed softly as he slid the van door shut.

Ryan took off his headset. No covert surveillance devices needed here. "You can only make out every tenth word they're saying the damn music is so loud. I think Chirnovsky is holding up his end of the bargain, but I don't think it'll do us any good with the shit the Sweet Lash is blaring out of the speakers."

"Fuck."

Ramiro's assessment was concise, for once, and Ryan wholeheartedly agreed with it.

"Where are the others?" Ryan asked.

"There are units farther down the alley and stationed at all entrances to the Sweet Lash.

Crenshaw's listening in to this," he waved at the two technicians who were trying doggedly to single out the men's voices from the booming music, "but he says we have to sit tight until Chirnovsky delivers."

"We're running out of time," Ryan said tensely. Frustration ,rose in his chest, feeling like burning acid.
Damn.
They'd worked So hard for this. Ramiro signaled for him to give him his headset.