Over the Line (22 page)

"Mostly my pride," he admitted. "So I quit drinking."

"And fighting," she concluded.

He shook his head, smiled. "Not quite. I just did my fighting sober. And I got paid for it."

Her eyebrows drew together. "Boxing?"

"Nothing that respectable. I joined the WWA."

"WWA?"

"World Wrestling Alliance." When she frowned in puzzlement, he elaborated. "Ever heard of Stone Cold? The Rock? You know—Hulk Hogan types? Grown sweaty men in leopard skins, pounding their chests and flying off the ropes in a ring for money."

Her mouth dropped open.

"Yeah, that's the reaction I got from my mom, too."

"Did you, um, like it?"

"Does Tweety Bird like Sylvester? No. I didn't like it. But I got to beat people around, so I thought I was swimming in champagne."

"Only .. ."

"Only it wasn't my cuppa."

She looked thoughtful. "And security work... is
it
your cuppa?"

He leaned forward, forked another rack onto her now empty plate before taking another for himself. "It's honest. It's respectable. So far I haven't had to hit the emergency room after a day's work. That's a plus," he added with a smile.

"But you have to put up with—at least in this case— pushy celebrity types."

She had the barest hint of a dimple in her left cheek when she smiled. He hadn't noticed that before. Wished he hadn't noticed it now.

"You're not so pushy."

"You are, though." He was glad to see a smile when she looked up at him, then down to the ribs in front of her. "Did I ask for another rack?"

"That's a question." He notched his chin toward her plate. "You want an answer to a question, you eat some more ribs."

"You're a pretty stand-up guy, you know that, Iowa?" she said after several moments had passed. She'd evidently taken the time to absorb all the things he'd told her. He hoped to hell it didn't come back to bite him on the ass.

"I mean ... it's not just that apple-pie and Boy Scout look you've got going on. You're ... real. I appreciate it... you know ... that you've been up-front with me."

"Yeah, well," he said, telling himself her comments deserved a reciprocal statement. "You're pretty stand-up,
too—for a badass wild-child rocker. Ma'am."

He didn't know why he so liked making her smile, but
when she did, he felt sort of pleased with himself. Like he'd done something really good.

"Maybe that's because I'm just a southern girl at heart."

"Maybe," he agreed.

She was Mississippi-born after all. And she'd grown up poor. Probably knew things about poverty and neglect that he'd never know. At least not firsthand.

"So," she said, leaning back and looking, he was glad to see, relaxed and mellow, "did you get to wrestle in a leopard skin?"

He grunted out a laugh at the teasing light in her eyes. "Animal prints were reserved for the stars."

As he'd hoped, that made her smile.

"As ex-Army Ranger Jason Plowboy Wilson, camos and combat boots were my thing. Original, huh?"

"Yeah," she said, giving him a long interested look that had him squirming. "You're an original all right."

He cleared his throat, felt his face go red, and damned his Finnish-Irish ancestry. She was too damn easy to like. Too damn easy on the eyes. Too damn easy to talk to and tease and... well. She was just too damn easy.

"Plowboy?" she added as an afterthought. "Guess it doesn't take much to figure that one out."

"Guess not."

She watched him through brown eyes gone all soft and sultry. "So, do I get any more questions?"

Not, he decided, if he wanted to get out of here with one shred of privacy left. "Are you done eating?"

"I'm stuffed."

He thanked Jesus again. "Then I guess the answer would be no. No more questions."

She leaned forward, propped her elbows on the table, her chin in her folded palms. "Just a couple. Just two itty-bitty little questions."

She was flirting. Which he liked even though he shouldn't. Maybe he'd gotten her too relaxed. Time for a rapid extraction.

"I'll get the check."

She reached across the table. Latched onto his wrist. "Let's look at the dessert menu."

He froze. Looked from her hand, where it felt warm and slight on his wrist, to her eyes.
Devil eyes,
he thought as she made it clear with a wicked, knowing smile that he wasn't off the hot seat yet.

Shit. This wasn't good.

But the two pieces of warm homemade pecan pie topped with melting vanilla ice cream that arrived five minutes later sure was.

She took a bite, swallowed, then hummed with pleasure. And when she looked over at him with a slumberous, seductive look in her eye, he squirmed again.

He lifted his Coke, sipped—

"Boxers or briefs?"

—and damned near spit it across the table.

He grabbed his napkin, wiped his mouth. "
Excuse
me?"

She looked way too damned pleased with herself. "Do you wear boxers or briefs?"

He got his coughing under control. "What the hell kind of a question is that?"

"Or do you go commando?" she asked with a little peek under the table.

"Stop that right now," he ordered with a dark look.

"What? Don't like that question, either? Okay. How about this? What do you like best—missionary position or girl on top?"

Then she dug back into her pie like she hadn't just dropped a MOAB—mother of all bombs—in the middle of the table.

He tossed his napkin on the tabletop. Leaned back and glared. "What are you doing?"

Dancing brown eyes met his with baleful innocence. "Asking questions. Isn't that the game we're playing?"

Okay. That was it. They were out of here. He angled his weight to his right hip, dug his wallet out of his left pocket. "I don't know what game
you're
playing."

Playful changed to sensual in a heartbeat. "Don't you?"

Well, okay. Yeah. He knew exactly what she was up to. And the idea held way too much appeal. Appeal, hell. Try he'd-like-to-clear-the-booth-top-and-take-her-right-there appeal.

He frowned at her over his open wallet. "This is a very, very bad idea."

"Is it?" she asked so quietly, he barely heard her. "Is it really?"

They could not have this discussion. He could not talk to Sweet Baby Jane Perkins about boxers or briefs or favorite positions. He could not talk about it because he couldn't afford to talk about it, not and keep his sanity and his professionalism and his distance from this woman.

This woman ... who was currently looking at him like she found him cute and amusing and sexy and a very likely substitute for a little nocturnal self-gratification.

Shit.

This was so bad. Because he found
her
cute and amusing and sexy and
damn,
did he want to take care of that particular need for her and satisfy a few of his own.

He couldn't think past the ringing in his ears. Finally realized it was his cell phone and with fingers that felt as thick and clumsy as sausages wrestled it out of the clip on his belt.

"Wilson," he said when he didn't recognize the number on the readout.

"Yeah, Wilson, it's Officer Rodman."

Jase studiously avoided eye contact with the trouble sitting across from him. "What's up?"

"I don't know. But I wanted to run something past you. That car—the one we hauled out of the river?"

The one that hit and killed Alice Perkins.
"Yeah?"

"I think I already told you it was stolen from a collector in Jacksonville the day before Ms. Perkins was killed."

"And?" Jase figured there was more. Hell, every time he turned around there was more.

"Well, look, this is a long shot, but can you ask Ms. Perkins if a nineteen-seventy-nine green Pontiac Lemans holds any significance for her?"

A green Pontiac Lemans. Lemans. Like the guy at the bank.
Jase didn't like the feel of this.

He hesitated, then held the phone away from his mouth and met her curious eyes. "Seventy-nine Pontiac. Mean anything to you?"

Her expression transitioned from curious to wary— and he knew, he just knew, things had just taken another turn toward weirdville.

"The car that killed your mother. It was a seventy-nine Pontiac."

Pale. She suddenly looked very pale.

"Green," he said after a long moment. "A green Lemans."

She closed her eyes. Folded her hands together on the booth top. Clenched them so tightly her knuckles turned white. "Lemans."

"Yeah." He reached across the booth and covered her hands, concern taking precedence over his misgivings about touching her.

She looked up at him, her eyes huge and haunted. "Mom had a seventy-nine Pontiac. A green Pontiac Lemans." Her alarmed gaze locked on his. "It was the only car we ever owned."

Janey sat in numb silence as Baby Blue drove them back to the motel and talked on his cell phone to his boss back in West Palm Beach.

Streetlights cast the front seat from darkness to shadows. That was her life these days. Darkness and shadows. She stared straight ahead, weary of feeling numb, weary of feeling weary.

And to think—not more than fifteen minutes ago she'd been flirting with her bodyguard. For a while there, she'd actually forgotten about all the fun and games of murder and mayhem and a million-dollar jackpot that her life had become. Well, she was back on the board now, playing the game whether she wanted to or not.

Damn. It felt like her life had turned into one big blender and she was stuck on the puree cycle.

Whoever had killed her mother knew a lot about her. Right down to the make, model, year, and color of the only car Alice Perkins had owned.

What could that mean? What could
that possibly
mean?

She thought about the photograph she'd tucked into her purse. And didn't know whether to hope she was right or pray she was wrong. Was it a picture of her father? Did she really want to know?

"Here's a list of names," Janey heard Baby Blue say after reviewing with his boss all the bizarre things happening—from Grimm's grisly gifts of raw and bleeding hearts, to the million-plus in her mother's lockbox, to the man trying to pass himself off as her proxy at the bank and using the same name as the car that had been used to kill her mother.

God, her head was spinning.

"See what you can find out about these four women. And start the search in Mississippi. They may be locals. May be women Alice Perkins had known for some time, because she has both their married and maiden names listed.