Detroit Combat (10 page)

A slight chill crept into her voice. “You'll do it all by yourself?”

“Yes, I think that might be best.”

“Have you wondered, James, why that man who attacked us happened to be following you? I mean, you don't think it was just bad luck, do you?”

Hawker winced slightly. “I figure they got a make on my car. I'm not sure how.”

“You're not sure how? James, those people know who you are. They have to know! I'll bet they have everything but color photographs of you.”

Thinking of the movie cameras he had performed in front of, Hawker winced again. He said nothing.

“No, James, you're not doing this alone,” the woman said sternly. “Paul is going to be in the hospital for several weeks. Queen Faith's gang is obviously well financed and absolutely merciless—and they know what you look like. For you to do it alone would be absolute suicide. And another thing—”

“Okay, okay,” Hawker cut in, laughing. “No more. I give. Uncle. We'll work together—but I give the orders, Clare. Period. You can make up the rules, but when the game starts, I call the plays. Okay?”

The woman smiled and held out her hand. Hawker took it. “You've got a deal, partner,” she said.

The handshake lasted longer than most handshakes, and then it became something else; something intimate, as Hawker looked deep into the woman's eyes. Startled, she jerked her hand away as if she had touched a bare electric line. “I'd better be going,” she said.

“Yeah,” Hawker said quickly, “we both need to get to … we both need some rest.” He wondered if his laugh sounded as sickly to her as it did to him.

Clare Riddock almost jumped to her feet, gathered up her coat, gloves, put her glass in the sink, and swung open the door. Their parting became a recitation of nervous clichés.

“Great seeing you, James.”

“Great seeing you, Clare.”

“Thanks a lot for the drink.”

“Thanks a lot for coming.”

“I'll call next time.”

“Stop in whenever you're passing by. Glad you're feeling better.”

“Glad you're feeling better too.”

Her boots creaked in the snow as she disappeared into the darkness. Her car door slammed shut; the engine started. Hawker felt like his personable grin was frozen on his face. The moment he closed the door, he shook it off.

Shit.
Shit
. Double shit.

As he heard the car pull away, Hawker wondered why his hands were shaking.

He went to the refrigerator and got his fourth beer.

THIRTEEN

In the dream, a child was tapping on the wall of the cottage with a toy hammer. In the background there were bare green hills and Irish black-faced sheep in the yard. At the side of the house was an artesian well lined with stone.

The child was smiling. He had bright red hair and a tiny, half-moon scar at the corner of his right eye.

Hawker recognized the child, yet he couldn't quite make his mind acknowledge who the little boy was. There was a mental shield up, a shield that had something to do with some anticipated tragedy. An explosion—yes, that was it. An explosion and screams and a little red-haired boy too mad to cry and too horrified not to. The harder Hawker struggled to remember, the louder the child tapped with the hammer.

And then he was sitting bolt upright in bed, the cold weight of a new Walther PPK in his hand. He listened carefully, his eyes peering through the darkness into the living room of the bungalow.

Someone was knocking at the door. A soft, anxious knock, as if the person knocking really didn't want to wake anyone.

Hawker threw back the covers and slid out of bed. He was halfway to the door before he realized he was naked. Hastily he returned to the bedroom and pulled on a pair of sweat pants.

The knocking stopped when he flicked on the lights. Looking at him through a corner of the windowpane was Clare Riddock.

Hawker glanced at his Seiko Submariner watch. It was 1:17
A
.
M
.

She had left more than two hours ago.

He swung open the door. The blast of cold air that hit him in the chest was numbing. The woman seemed to tumble in with the wind.

“Hawk, I'm so sorry to wake you—geez, what an ass I must seem like to you!”

Hunched over, she was rubbing her hands together.

“Out slumming, Detective Riddock?”

She started to say something, then shook her head in exasperation. “God, I can't believe myself sometimes!” She paced to the fireplace and tried to warm her hands over the few remaining coals. “I can be such a nerd!”

Hawker shrugged, went to the kitchen, poured Johnnie Walker into two small tumblers, and carried one to the lady. “Tell me what you did—I'd like to yell at you too.”

She threw her head back and made a whispered growl of disgust. “I left here at just after eleven. All the way home I kept thinking that I wanted to—” She looked at him briefly and swung her head back toward the nonexistent fire. “I kept thinking I wanted to talk to you some more.”

“Oh?”

She was very careful not to look into his eyes. “Yeah. I'm not sure we covered everything. You know. There are a lot of details to discuss.”

“Oh, right,” said Hawker. “Details.”

“Anyway, I paced around the house for a while, then got back into my car and drove back here, hoping to catch you before you went to bed.”

“And you live close, so that doesn't explain the lost hour—”

“I missed the turn, tried to stop when I shouldn't have, and went into a snowdrift. I felt like such an idiot. I promised myself I wouldn't come and get you no matter what. I kept waiting for someone to stop and offer to help. But we're pretty out of the way here. There isn't much traffic on Sunday nights, and the cars that did pass didn't offer.”

“That's not so bad—”

“Wait. I'm not done. When no one stopped, I tried to get the car out myself. I put wood behind the wheels and spun the tires and rocked it—and nothing worked. Finally I shut off the engine and started to dig the snow away with one of the hubcaps. I left the headlights on so I could see.” She made her little sound of anguish again. “That ran the battery down, and now the damn car won't start.”

Hawker put his arm around her. She resisted for a moment, then allowed herself to be drawn to him. “Do you know why I didn't want you to leave tonight?” he said into her ear.

“Um-uh.”

“It wasn't because I wanted to discuss details.”

“No?”

Hawker brushed her cheek with his lips and rubbed his face against the shampoo softness of her blond hair. “No, I wanted you to stay because I'm cold and lonely, and I like you very much.”

She stretched her arms up to him and Hawker kissed her full lips, feeling the warmth of her hips press through the thin cotton warmup suit.

She took a step backward and took off her heavy jacket. There was a new glow in her gray eyes now; a glow brighter, more demanding, more feverish than he had expected. “James,” she whispered, “the fire, it needs wood.”

“What? The fire … right.” He turned and added a stack of kindling and three chunks of oak in a heap. It smoldered, then began to crack and whoosh, blazing.

He turned back around to see the woman carrying a heavy blanket from the bedroom. The hiking boots added length to the long legs, and her breasts were full beneath the ski sweater. She spread the blanket on the floor and held out her hand.

“Not many people know what a clutz I really am. I've spent my whole life trying to camouflage it—the B.A. degree, the law degree, the cold businesswoman facade. They're all just disguises. Beneath the facade, I'm still a gawky, flat-chested adolescent too shy and awkward, and much too sensitive.” She nuzzled him. “What? You still like me even though you know the truth?”

Hawker took her hand and pulled her to him. He kissed her softly. “I had a workout tonight that set a new clutz high in lows. We have more in common than you think.”

She kissed him then, harder, her mouth slightly open, her tongue tracing the stubble of beard around his lips. Her hands caressed the nape of his neck, then slid down his bare back and came to rest where the sweat pants hung low on his hips.

She trembled as she whispered, “I haven't been with a man for a very long time, James. A very long time. Take me, please. Do whatever you want to; don't hold back … because I'm not going to hold back, and I want all of you. I don't want to feel ashamed because you expect me to be timid, James. Please don't expect me to be timid.”

Her mouth opened completely then as Hawker kissed her. Her lips were wet and swollen, and she shuddered slightly as he stripped the sweater over her head.

Through the silk T-shirt she wore, her nipples stood erect and he could see the round shadows of the full areolas. He massaged her through the T-shirt, then stripped that away too. Her breasts hung full and heavy and firm. The nipples tapered into swollen cones, pointed slightly upward, and she groaned and hugged his head to her as he kissed them.

When his attention to her breasts brought her to such a fevered pitch that it seemed she might climax through just his touch, she stepped back and knelt before him. Hawker wrapped his fists in her golden hair and gazed down on her perfect face as she slid his sweat pants down to his ankles.

“Step out of them,” she whispered, breathing heavily. “Step out of them and turn toward the firelight. I want to see you.”

As Hawker turned, she opened her mouth wide and took him halfway in. Her hands on his taut buttocks, she began to move him deeply into her, then out again as Hawker groaned, his right hand still knotted in her hair, his left hand exploring the smoothness of her neck and the swell of her breasts.

After a time, he said, “You seem to enjoy that, lady.”

“Um-huh.”

“Keep it up for much longer, and you're going to get quite a surprise.”

She slid her lips away from him long enough to smile and whisper, “Sounds delicious, James. Don't hold back; please don't hold back. I want all of you.”

When Hawker could stand it no more, he forced her mouth away from him and pulled her down onto the blanket with him in front of the fire. Her hips arched as he unzipped her jeans, pulled off her boots, and stripped away the jeans. The golden firelight made the pale-blue panties appear jade green. A pale curl of pubic hair escaped on either side, and she thrust her pelvis upward to help him remove the panties.

“Yes, James, yes.”

The woman's hands wound themselves in the blanket as Hawker touched his lips to the inside of her thighs. While one hand moved from breast to heavy breast, Hawker used his tongue to explore the salted, scented depths of her.

As she neared climax, Clare moaned a deep throaty growl of pleasure, then sat up quickly. Her kiss was bruising, and Hawker could see that her face, her lips, her complete muscle structure had gone completely slack with wanting.

Taking her hand, Hawker pulled her to her feet. The stereo was playing an instrumental he recognized: “Our Winter Love” by Bill Purcell. Standing, he cupped his hands around the woman's buttocks and lifted her off the floor. Hawker buried his face in her breasts, spread her slightly, and let her settle, gasping, as he slip deeply into her.

The woman quivered as he entered her, her legs wrapped around his waist, her arms wrapped around his neck, her head thrown back and long blond hair hanging down.

Hawker used his hands to slide her up and down upon the length of him. Soon she began to tremble violently as her hips pulsed and the color of her whole body flashed from white to ruby red, and she pulled her face against his, and she whispered in ecstasy, “Yes, James, yes, yes, yes, don't stop, never stop, please, please, please never stop.…”

The woman pushed the hair back from her face and yawned. “What time is it, darling?”

“After three.”

“You mean that we've been … we've been on this blanket for more than an hour and a half?”

Naked, Hawker reached out and put another log on the fire. A meteor of sparks flew up the chimney as he did. “An hour and forty-five minutes.”

“My God, it seemed more like five minutes.”

“Thanks.”

She laughed. “You know I didn't mean it that way.”

Hawker hugged her close to him and kissed her forehead. “I hope not. I used up more calories on you tonight then I did in my four-mile run. Got just as bruised up though, I think.”

There was a Mona Lisa smile on her lips. “I told you I wasn't going to hold back. I told you it had been a long time.”

“Maybe those old stories about traveling men dying of exhaustion at remote nunneries are true, huh?”

She slapped at him. “I'm hardly a nun.”

“The Vatican can thank its lucky stars for that.”

Hawker got up, pulled on his sweat pants against the cold, and walked across the living room. He found a tin of snuff in the drawer and took a discreet dip. The tobacco made him slightly lightheaded and gave him a little charge of energy. He found a paper cup to spit in.

“What are you doing?” Hawker asked.

Naked, the woman was collecting her clothes from the floor. Hawker realized again that he had never seen a more perfect female body in his life. She said, “I'm going to get dressed. Maybe I can borrow your car until tomorrow. I'll have a wrecker pull my car out of the drift, and I'll drive your Corvette back here—”

“You're not leaving—you're staying here; you're sleeping with me.”

She looked up at him gratefully. Hawker realized she had been hoping he would ask. She dropped the clothes in a heap and took him in her arms. “Are you sure?”

“I've got no one to keep me warm. Besides, we still have ‘details' to discuss.”

The woman looked closely at his face. She began to trace the outline of a small half-moon scar at the corner of his eye. “I'll keep you warm,” she whispered. “And tomorrow we'll go to work?”