In the Arms of the Wind (20 page)

By the time he slowed down to turn into Rampart Villas, he was as nervous as a green boy heading for his first date. When he pulled into his assigned parking garage, his hands shook and he was sweating.

All the way up in the elevator he worried about what he would say. He’d completely missed lunch—unable to eat because of the fury that had taken hold of him—and now he had a sour stomach to add to a brutal headache and boyish nerves.

She was still on the deck when he entered the apartment, but this time she was curled up in a large double Papasan chair, staring back at him as he walked toward her.

“You okay?” he asked, hunkering down in front of her.

“Yeah,” she said. Her gaze passed over his unsure face and her heart melted. “I’ve come to terms with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t have to like it, Danny, but I can accept it. I can compartmentalize it, push it to the back of my mind and try to ignore it. I can’t forget it, but I can pretend it isn’t there.” She lowered her head. “I’m darn good at pretending.”

“I don’t want to lose you, Kaycee,” he said earnestly. He reached for her hand, thankful she didn’t draw back. He brought it to his chest, placed her palm over his heart. “I can’t lose you, baby. You’re the best thing’s that ever happened to me.”

She flexed her fingers on his chest. “Don’t hide things from me, Danny,” she asked. “That’s all I ask. Always tell me the truth, no matter how hard that truth might be to tell. I won’t shatter. I won’t run away. I can’t pretend it doesn’t bother me, but I can learn to live with it.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “People may say things about my family, write things that will be hard to accept. You may learn some things that are really bad. Things about me.”

“But you’re not part of that badness,” she said. “I understand why you and your family don’t seem to get along, why you don’t want to talk about them, be around them. You uphold the law; they break it. The whole situation has to be horrible for you.”

Danny looked away from her earnest, trusting face. The innocent look in her eyes shamed him. Her naiveté was touching, but it cut him to the quick. His guilt overwhelmed him for a moment and he felt tears prickling behind his eyes.

“Danny, I understand,” she said.

He nodded, unable to speak.

“Come here, baby,” she said, moving over for him to join her in the large bowl of the overstuffed chair.

He toed off his boots and curled up beside her, drawing her into the cusp of his shoulder to hold her tight to him.

“I love you so much,” he said.

“Then show me,” she said, tipping her head back to gaze tenderly at him. “Show me you love me, Danny. I need you to block out everything but us.”

It was a gentle, sweet lovemaking this time. He took his time being exquisitely tender. He rained kisses up and down her body—back and front—paying a lot of attention to the soft indention at the base of her spine. He suckled her nipples until they were hard little buds. He kissed her lips until they were swollen from his passion. He moved into her with a long, easy thrust and went slow as he impaled himself on her warm, moist sheath. He lifted her hips and placed a pillow beneath them so his thrusts would be deep but not hard as he took her. He threaded his fingers with hers, and when their bodies were joined, he rocked against her, swiveled his hips slow and firm and deep until she moaned and released along his flesh with tiny little spasms that brought his own climax to a shuddering end.

When he was finished with her, when he had given her as much pleasure as she’d given him, he lay with her in the crook of his arm and closed his eyes.

All was right at that moment in Danny Gallagher’s dark, stained world. He hoped to God it stayed that way.

* * * * *

At a little past midnight he awoke with a stubborn case of the munchies and eased Kaycee from his shoulder as he scooted gently from the bed. As he padded barefoot through the great room on the way to the kitchen he heard something at the front door and stopped to listen.

The sound came again.

He frowned then veered to the door, opened it, surprised that no one was standing there. He looked both ways down the hall but only closed doors stared back at him. He started to turn away, to shut the door, when his gaze drifted down to the floor and he stopped still in his tracks.

It looked innocuous sitting there—just a small cardboard box wrapped in jute twine. Roughly ten inches square, it sat directly in the center of the sill. For a split second he was tempted to bend over and pick it up but it was at that moment he heard the not-so innocuous sound that could only be coming from the box.

“Baby, I…” Kaycee said behind him, and he threw a hand up.

“Go back into the bedroom and close the door,” he ordered in a soft voice. “Call 911. Tell them we have a bomb on our doorstep.”

Kaycee gasped. “What?” she whispered.

“Do as I tell you, Kaycee,” he said firmly.

“Come with me!” she insisted.

“Do as I tell you,” he snapped. “Don’t argue with me. Do it now!” He risked a look behind him, took in her chalky-white face and tried to smile at her. “It needs to be defused, Kaycee, and I don’t have the tools to do it. Call 911 before the damned thing goes off.”

She backed into the bedroom but didn’t close the door. He saw her rush to the bedside table, snatch up the phone and punch in the three numbers. Vaguely he heard her talking to whoever had answered but the blood was rushing through his ears, making it hard for him to hear anything save the tic-tic-tic coming from the box. He took a step away from the package, another. His mouth was bone-dry, his breath coming in shallow gasps. He was so afraid the device would blow before he could join Kaycee in the bedroom, put a door between them and however much firepower was in the bomb.

He took one more step back then the ticking stopped. His eyes flared. He snagged in a ragged breath. He spun around and dove for the open doorway just as the device went off.

Chapter Eight

“Thankfully the charge was small,” the lieutenant in charge of the bomb squad said as his men gathered evidence. “If you’d picked it up though, you might be missing a finger or two now or—worse yet—blind.”

Kaycee was clinging to Danny’s arm as they stood with the lieutenant. She was no longer shaking but she couldn’t seem to release her hold on him. The damage done to the front door and walls to either side of it was not insignificant with a jagged gaping hole in the drywall, a scorched ceiling both inside and outside the apartment, and charred carpeting only in the hallway since the entryway into Danny’s apartment was marble.

“I’d say it was meant more as a warning.”

“Can you lift any prints?” Danny asked, anger causing a muscle to jump in his cheek.

“We’re sure as hell gonna try, Detective,” the lieutenant replied. “Don’t make any bets on us finding anything though. Whoever assembled this knew exactly what they were doing. I’ve seen time bombs like this before and I’m sure you have too.”

Danny nodded. “Do whatever you can,” he said then reached for his cell as it began to trill. “Yeah, Gallagher?”

“Are you all right?” It was Johnny.

“There wasn’t enough explosive in the thing to do much more than blow my fucking door off and carve me an archway into the hall,” Danny said.

“You weren’t hurt? What about Kaycee?”

“We’re both okay.”

“I want you over here. Now,” Johnny said firmly. “And don’t even think about arguing with me, Danny. The old man is a raving lunatic over this. I can protect you so I want you where I can.”

“I’m not helpless, John,” Danny snapped.

“
Daideo
had me send my men over to pick you up,” Johnny warned. “Don’t make me tell them to grab your ass and throw you in the car, fuckhead. That might scare your lady. You want that to happen?”

Danny looked down at Kaycee. “He wants us at his place.”

“Whatever you want,” she said, too stunned to argue about it.

“All right, we’ll be there as soon as I’m finished with the investigators.”

He flipped the phone shut, cutting off the conversation and pocketed the cell.

“You got someone to watch the place until you can get the hole repaired?” the lieutenant asked.

“Yeah,” Danny said. “Security will see to it.”

“Must be nice to be rich, Gallagher,” one of the bomb squad members mumbled.

“I wouldn’t know, Phelps,” Danny replied. “I’m a working stiff just like you.” The other man snorted in reply but not in an insulting way.

“The Malones make bad enemies,” the lieutenant said. “Rumor is they are after you. What did you do to them?”

“What’s he talking about, Danny?” Kaycee asked, her worried eyes locked on him.

Danny could have pummeled the man into oblivion. He shook his head, sending the lieutenant a nasty, quelling glance. “He’s full of it. Every time something like this happens to a cop, they start pulling out people you’ve arrested or sent to prison. There’s always rumors, Kace.”

“Kathleen said there had been trouble in the past between the Malones and the Gallaghers,” Kaycee said.

“Kathleen has a big mouth,” Danny grumbled.

“Is it starting up again?” she asked, terrified Danny would get caught in the middle.

“No, baby,” Danny said. He slipped his arm around her. “You heard the lieutenant. This was just a warning. If they’d wanted to kill me, they would have put more oomph in the charge.”

“That’s two attempts on your life, Detective,” the lieutenant said. “I’d take it more seriously if I were you.”

“Well, you’re not me so keep your goddamned thoughts to yourself,” Danny told him.

“Two attempts?” Kaycee echoed. “Danny, what other…?” Her lips parted. “Oh my God! It was you they were after the other night not me!”

Danny was furious the lieutenant had opened a wiggling can of worms and thrown Kaycee into another bout of terror. She was trembling again and he clenched his teeth together to keep from cussing out the entire bomb squad.

“Let’s go pack a bag, okay?” he said, ushering her away from the men milling around in the great room.

Kaycee looked up at him with such wounded fear, it tore at his heart. He understood she needed guidance more than comfort at that moment and refused to give in to the need to console.

“Danny…” she began as he released her arm and strode over to the dresser.

“Not now,” he said firmly. “Not here.”

For a few moments she stood unmoving at the bed as he opened drawers and took out her underwear and nightgown then went over to the closet to retrieve an overnight bag. She took a deep, steadying breath and set about gathering her own things for—true to manly form—he was picking all the wrong stuff. He said nothing to her as he passed her on the way into the bathroom to get his shaving kit and her cosmetics bag, their toothbrushes.

“You gonna be over at your brother’s?” the lieutenant asked as Danny and Kaycee came through the great room.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll call you if we find out anything or need to ask any questions.”

“Okay.”

“Be careful.”

Danny thanked the lieutenant then helped Kaycee over the destruction caused by the bomb. He led her over to the elevator then looked back at his front door hanging askew on what was left of the jamb.

“We need cameras installed,” he said. He adjusted the two overnight bags he carried. “Whoever put that bomb on our doorstep moved awful damned quick to get down the stairs, but at least we would have had a shot of him.”

“You don’t think it was one of your neighbors?” she asked. There were three other apartments on his floor—one at the opposite end of the floor from his and two in the middle.

“The Donovans in the apartment next to mine are in Rome for her son’s ordination,” Danny said. “They don’t have a housesitter, but you couldn’t get into that apartment without a nuclear device. Paranoid doesn’t even begin to describe those two. The Olivers are on an Alaskan cruise and won’t be back until next month. Their housesitter is a young college grad student who’s related to one of them. I saw her talking to one of the arson team investigators. The apartment at the far end belongs to the McCartneys and they are both older than time and just as steady. They were standing in their doorway watching everything. No, it wouldn’t have been any of my neighbors.”

“Was it the Malones, Danny?” she asked.

He hesitated then remembered she wanted the truth. “Yeah, babe, it looks that way.”

“Whoever it was could still be here,” she said softly. “Could even live here.”

“Yeah, and you can bet the investigators will question every single resident. My grandfather’s office will have information on every person living here and by morning, we’ll know if any of them have ties to the Malones.”

The elevator settled and the doors opened. Blocking the exit was a burly man with shoulders wide enough for a pro football player. He tapped a finger to the side of his head.

“Evening, Mr. D. I’m here to take you out to Windthorn,” the man said in a deep, gravelly voice.

“I can drive myself out,” Danny said irritably.