Reckless (3 page)

This close he wasn't as frightening. Big,
yes, but that hardness to his face was only in the expression. He'd
lose the hardened-criminal look the minute he smiled, she thought.
She could see the shadow of a beard darkening his jaw. He stopped,
bending to pick up her shoe when they came to it, and then its
partner. As they moved past the glow of the car's headlights, she
saw his thick lips and the cleft in the center of the upper one,
which gave it a sensual shape, when he wasn't snarling.

He wasn't half as scary as he probably
thought he was. He could've killed her. He hadn't. He could've
roughed her up, slapped her around until she was ready to do
whatever he said. He hadn't. Hell, he couldn't even make her walk
barefoot over a lot of broken glass and litter.

When he dropped her onto the passenger seat,
slammed her door and started around to his side of the car, she
thought about yanking the door open and running again. He must've
seen it in her face, because he tapped her window with the gun
barrel and shook his head. In another second, he was behind the
wheel.

He drove fast, but not recklessly, away from
the city. The headlights barely cut a path through the pouring
rain. She watched him often. He didn't look her way at all.

He'd driven in silence for forty-five minutes
before she drummed up the nerve to ask, “Where do you live?
Tibet?”

His brows went up, and he glanced at her
briefly before returning his attention to the highway. “It isn't
much farther.”

He took the next exit, and they spent ten
minutes negotiating side roads before finally pulling up to a tall
iron gate. Best she could figure, they were upstate somewhere. He
thumbed a button on his keyring. The gate swung open and they drove
through. It closed smoothly behind them. The house that loomed
ahead was a fieldstone monstrosity. It towered, three stories tall
and the color of mud.

He thumbed another button when they pulled up
to the attached garage, and an overhead door rose. His headlights
pierced the black interior. He pulled the car in, shut it off,
killed the headlights. The door closed behind them. They sat in
total darkness.

He sighed. She said, “Now what?”

“Don't go nuts on me,” he said, his voice
very low, as if he thought someone might be listening. “This is for
your own good.”

She stiffened in anticipation, but he had her
wrists quickly imprisoned in one huge hand. His other hand smoothed
something sticky over her mouth. Tape! She heard his door open. He
pulled her across the seat to get out the same side he had. He kept
hold of her wrists and managed to stay far enough ahead of her to
avoid her attempts at kicking him. A lot of good it would've done,
she thought miserably. She was barefoot

He hauled her forward, flung open a door and
pulled her through it.

She was in a kitchen, she realized slowly. It
was dim but not pitch dark. The impression she had was of copper
and chrome. He pulled her through another door and along a hallway.
She glimpsed a huge formal dining room to the left, and what might
be a library to the right. He moved too quickly, his long legs
eating up the distance as she jogged in his wake. Another doorway,
and she would have gasped if she could, at the living room. A
marble-topped bar with crystal glasses suspended upside-down from a
rack above it. Brass-legged coffee tables and end tables with glass
surfaces. White marble sculptures stood on every one of them: a
rearing stallion, a Bengal tiger, Pan with his pipes. The ceilings
were stucco, and there was a chandelier with crystal droplets
turning slowly.
Money,
the place seemed to say, not in a
whisper, but with a boastful shout.

He pulled her along, over plush carpet that
felt like heaven to her frozen, bruised feet. She saw a foyer
beyond a mammoth archway and what she took to be the front
entrance. It glowed with muted golden light, and she caught an
unnatural glimmer from the left eye of the bear's head that was
mounted on one wall. It caught her attention immediately, and when
she looked at it, she realized that the two eyes didn't quite
match. Because one of them concealed a camera lens. She'd been at
this game too long not to spot surveillance devices as obvious as
that one. The question was, who did the big lug want to watch? Or
was someone watching him? Did he even know the thing was there?

Her pondering was cut short when they came to
a broad staircase and he pulled her up it behind him. At the top
they veered down a hall and mounted still another staircase, this
one steep and narrow. At the top of that, they traversed a nearly
pitch dark corridor, and went through a doorway into what might
have been a study. There was a desk silhouetted in the darkness.
Other shapes loomed, but she didn't have time to identify them. He
walked her right up to a bookcase at the far end of the room and he
reached up and did something to one of its volumes.

Suddenly the entire bookcase swung inward
like a door. She felt her eyes widen in fear. Gangsters and hit men
she could deal with. Not secret passages in creepy old houses,
though. No way. She braced her feet and resisted, but he pulled her
hard and she stumbled through into total blackness. The bookcase
door closed.

What the hell was this? Was she in some
cobwebbed and rat-infested partition between the walls? Was he
going to entomb her here and leave her to die where no one could
hear her screams? God, this was like something Poe might have
written.

He dropped her hands and moved away from her,
and she shot forward, simultaneously ripping the tape from her
mouth, regardless of the sting. She grabbed for his arm, and when
she touched it with her groping hand, she clung. “Don't leave me in
here. You can't—”

She stopped when she heard a soft click and
the room was flooded with light. Releasing his arm, she looked
around. This was a compact living room. A brown small camelback
sofa and a couple of armchairs were arranged on plush carpet a
shade lighter. A giant TV was mounted to one wall. Off to her
right, there was a tiny kitchenette. To her left was an open door,
beyond which she saw a king-size bed, neatly made.

She heard his deep sigh when he crossed to
the sofa, apparently no longer concerned about her getting away. He
sat down as if exhausted and leaned his head back. His hair was no
longer combed down gangster style. The rain, combined with
wrestling her so many times in the past hour, had it curling over
his forehead as crazily as her own. It was dark as sable and still
damp.

She studied him, her fear nearly drowned out
by her boundless curiosity. It had always been her biggest flaw. So
her father used to tell her.

She looked at the man again. Her kidnapper.
“What kind of a setup
is
this?”

“What's your name?” he asked as if he hadn't
heard her question.

She hugged herself as a full-body shudder
raced through her, hesitating over the question. If he knew who she
was, he'd change his mind about keeping her alive in a hurry.
Still, it wouldn't hurt to tell him her real name.

“Antonia Veronica Rosa del Rio.” She
pronounced it with a perfect accent. As far as recognition went,
she knew there would be none. It was a far cry from her pseudonym,
Toni Rio.

His stern expression changed. He seemed
amused. The hard lines in his face eased, and his lips curved
upward at the corners. “I guess I don't need to ask if you're
making it up.” He tipped his head back and regarded the ceiling.
“Antonia Veronica Rosa del Rio,” he mused. “What do your friends
call you?”

“Irrelevant, since you're no friend of
mine.”

His head came down and he fixed her to the
spot with deep brown eyes. In this light she could see the lighter
stripes surrounding his pupils. “Glad you realize it, Antonia.” He
watched her for a minute longer. “You're shivering,” he said at
length, then nodded toward the bedroom door. “Bathroom's through
there. I'd suggest a hot bath and some sleep. You can use one of my
robes for now.”

“
¡Que cara!”

His brows went up.
“Problemo?”
he
asked.

“I'd sooner stay wet.” She was shaking harder
now, and it wasn't entirely from the cold. He was big. Not big like
some guys were big; this guy was body builder big. When he started
talking about baths and sleeping and her wearing his robe...well,
maybe she was a little more afraid of him than she'd thought. After
all, they were alone here. They were isolated, cut off from the
world.

He stood slowly and came closer until he
towered over her, making her feel as small as a child. Her pride
wouldn't let her back away. Her gaze stayed on the knot of his
loosened tie. Her lungs slowly filled with his scent and that of
the rain on his body.

“Look at me, Antonia.”

She did. She didn't like looking into those
eyes so she tried focusing on his lips. The sensual curl of them
made them more disturbing.

“If you don't get out of those wet clothes,”
he told her, “you are probably going to catch pneumonia. I'm not in
any position to take you to a hospital right now, so I can't allow
that to happen. Now, are you going to take them off, or am I?”

She tried to swallow and couldn't. She wanted
to move away from him, but her feet seemed to have rooted
themselves through the floor. He took her inaction for defiance.
She knew it when he shrugged as if it made no difference to him and
reached up to release the top button of her blouse.

Toni drew a steadying breath and told herself
to move.

He freed the second button. At the third, his
fingertips brushed over the mound of her breast, deliberately, she
was certain. The way he slowed his movements, made them a caress,
was a dead giveaway.

The contact shocked her out of her momentary
paralysis. She balled up one hand, drew back and punched him in the
jaw. His head snapped sideways from the impact and she spun around
and ran into the bedroom, slamming the door and leaning back
against it. She was sure he'd come after her, and God only knew
what he'd do then.

Nick stared at the door, rubbing his jaw.
She'd surprised him more than she'd hurt him. A grudging smile
tugged at the corners of his lips, and he shook his head slowly.
Damned if he'd come across many men who'd slug a guy his size—let
alone one who happened to be packing a 9 mm. Little Antonia didn't
hesitate. She was gutsy; no denying it.

At least he'd managed to figure out what she
reacted to. He'd been worried about how the hell he was going to
control her. His gun hadn't seemed to intimidate her, or his size,
or his best street-thug imitation. When he touched her, though,
that was a whole other story. When he'd trailed the backs of his
fingers over the soft swell of her breast, her pupils had dilated
until her irises vanished. Then she'd decked him. Hard.

So he'd learned two valuable methods of
dealing with his temporary captive. He could intimidate her with
sexual innuendo, and he'd better duck whenever he found it
necessary. He didn't imagine there were many things that scared
her. He figured he was lucky he’d stumbled upon even one.

Nick tore his gaze from the door and glanced
around the room. She'd be safe here, and no threat to his cover.
This part of the mansion had been a safe room, designed by a
billionaire with more money than common sense. It wasn’t on the
blueprints, and when the feds had confiscated it for back taxes,
they’d decided it was the perfect place for a low level gangster
who allegedly came from big money, to live. He unplugged the old
fashioned landline phone, wound the cord around it and tucked it
under the couch. It had a secure line and was less easily hacked
than his secure cell. He'd take it downstairs later, while she
slept. He double-checked the bookcase door—cliché, yes, but also
the only way out of this hidden apartment. It could only be opened
by pressing the right combination of numbered buttons on the panel
beside it. A light would flash and an alarm would sound if anyone
tampered with the lock, so there was no chance of her getting
away.

He felt a momentary pang of guilt, but forced
it aside. It wasn't difficult. What he was doing was far too
important to put it at risk just for one woman. So she'd be scared
for a while. So her family would go nuts worrying about her. So
what? Kids were dying every day, and Lou Taranto was as responsible
for that as if he were choking the life out of them with his own
fat hands. Nick's own brother... No. He wouldn't think about
Danny—not now.

Too late, a voice whispered from within, and
the memories crashed over his mind like a flash flood.

Nick squeezed his brother’s skinny, limp
hand tighter, as though he could squeeze the life back into it.
“Don't die on me, man. You're all I got, Danny, hold on. Hold on
for your kid brother.''

Blue eyes opened, but they were
filmy
—
glazed. Danny didn’t look like he used to. He was thin
as a rail, his face and body, heroin-ravaged.“S-sorry, Nicky...let
you down...you kep' tellin' me... poison, man... poison.''

Sirens screamed nearer, louder, until they
tore Nick's brain apart with their noise. The wind blew like frozen
death into the condemned, rat-infested heap Danny and his addict
pals called their own. None of them were there now, though. Danny's
“friends” had run off and left him there to die alone. Nick reached
down to brush an auburn tangle from Danny's forehead. Even if the
color of his hair had faded. Danny had all the Irish blood in him,
from their mother. Fiona had walked out two years ago—just left.
They didn't need her, though. They had each other. Nick was the
image of their father, but he didn't want to be. A. J. Manelli was
doing eight to fifteen in Attica. They didn't need him, either.