Slow Heat (5 page)

He agreed with Ben, though. Maggie O’Malley was hot as hell. She wore her auburn hair pulled back with two barrettes, which showed off her high cheekbones and trim, straight nose. Her lips were full and naturally red and had been moist and incredibly distracting the entire time he’d been with her. She’d had bright blue eyes that had flashed with defiance and a rush of other emotions while in her office. Maggie definitely had no training in curbing her emotions or reactions to anything happening around her. She hadn’t been guarded. Those bright blue orbs had been open books so easy to read. He hadn’t seen her temper seriously rage until they’d joined the others in the club and she’d raced around the bar. Then they’d been a hard, steely cobalt guarded with long, thick dark lashes.

Micah preferred his women with a fair amount of makeup, and tight-fitting clothing that showed off all their curves. For the most part, women who were slutty. When he’d given himself downtime, which hadn’t been often, there wasn’t time to chase down and seduce a lady. He knew what he wanted and a woman who wanted the same thing, with no strings attached, was always the best catch. He’d indulged in ladies who ran a bit wild since he’d been barely a man.

Maggie O’Malley had been as far from the type of woman Micah sought out as possible. She had dressed rather conservatively, with a sleeveless cream-colored blouse that had a V-neck collar. She’d tugged on it quite a bit, showing off a decent amount of cleavage each time. He’d never found capris to be very attractive. They had always reminded him of clothing that settled-down married women wore. But Maggie had been wearing capris that had fit nicely around her slender hips and full, round ass. She wasn’t tanned like most women in LA, but her creamy white, perfect complexion had brought out the blush in her cheeks when she’d noticed him as more than an intrusion to her daily routine. And she’d noticed him more than once—that was, until she realized he’d been there to bust her special form of accounting wide open. Then all sexual curiosity had vanished.

Micah wasn’t much on families. His old man and uncle meant the world to him but he’d never considered the three of them anything close to a traditional family. Maggie’s pictures in her office revealed a good-sized family. She’d yelled out to her uncle Larry a couple of times during the confusion of Micah trying to restrain her until the police had shown up. For a few minutes there he’d contemplated whether her entire family were corrupt, an Irish Mafia—or possibly Italian, since she’d mentioned her mother was Italian.

Call it intuition, but Maggie didn’t fit the profile. Granted, Micah only spent about half an hour with her before two police officers had escorted her and her uncle to patrol cars, but Micah had always trusted his initial gut reaction to people. He seldom read a person wrong. Maggie was either innocent or damn good at what she did. Since her uncle had initially been arrested and not her, Micah was glad the law would determine if she were guilty or innocent. The fiery little sexpot had done a good job of appearing shocked, then outraged, that any of them would consider her a criminal.

“Santinos has been charged with money laundering across state lines, and the country’s border.” It was Haley who answered. “You two both did a great job with that case,” she added. “Micah, you sure had a feisty one on your hands.”

“Maybe you’ll get a chance to take her down again someday.” Greg grinned at him.

Micah frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“They weren’t able to pin charges on her. Maggie O’Malley was released. She does remain a person of interest, however.”

“Let me know if you need help with that one,” Ben said, punching Micah in the arm before heading out the door. “If I’m off the clock, I’m headed out to play some pool.”

“You’re both off the clock,” Haley told them. “Micah, you’re on call tonight.”

“No problem,” he said. It wouldn’t bother him if they needed to capture someone during the night. He had no intention of creating a life for himself while here in LA.

Micah followed Ben out the door, waving over his shoulder as Greg and Haley called out their good-byes for the night. He headed across the driveway to the side of the house where his bike was parked. Greg King also rode a Harley. The garage door was open when Micah reached his bike. He glanced at the shiny chrome on the expensive machine inside. Micah’s bike wasn’t quite as fancy as Greg’s. Micah used it as his only means of transportation. Gas was cheaper on two wheels, and he traveled light; anything he ever needed, he could take with him on the motorcycle. Micah didn’t ride to stand out. He rode to blend in, be nondescript, and be able to move out of a situation fast if needed. There might not be anything to worry about right now, but he remained alert. It was the way he was raised and part of his nature.

His ride home didn’t take more than twenty minutes. Living in LA was a slight adjustment after small-town life. Micah adjusted to his new surroundings easily enough, though. He’d spent most of his life watching people, their behaviors, and how they lived. For the most part people didn’t vary too much from one part of the country to another. But it was smart to put surroundings to memory. If anything, he took learning his way around a new city as a challenge. LA was his home turf now, and he needed to be comfortable here.

By the time he rolled into his narrow driveway and parked his bike in the garage, it was dark. Not that he ever got home from work with it light outside, unless it was because the sun was coming up.

Micah preferred long hours on the job. Creating a personal life would be a very bad idea. He would work for KFA for the rest of the year until things had calmed down enough that no one would suspect him returning and making his kill. The asshole who’d set him up had numbered days. He wouldn’t risk trying to find his old man and uncle before whoever set the Mulligans up was no longer breathing.

He entered his small, dilapidated rental house through the back door, flipped on his kitchen light, and locked the door behind him. There were frozen pizzas and a variation of different types of store-bought prepared meals in his freezer. He had juice, milk, bottled water, and beer, along with a dozen eggs, a mixture of different sliced meats and cheeses for sandwiches, and the usual condiments. Mulligans didn’t do drive-through fast food. A person was an open target waiting in a fast-food lane.

Dropping his leather gloves on the small table just inside the door, Micah then slipped off his jacket and hung it on the back of the chair pushed under the table. His cell rang and he pulled it off his belt and headed through the house to his bathroom.

“Jones,” he grumbled and struggled with his shirt while keeping his phone to the ear.

“You left the house too soon.” Haley’s good mood was obvious in her tone.

“Why is that?” He pulled his phone from his ear just long enough to yank his shirt off and toss it in his laundry basket.

“She showed up right after you left.”

“What?” Micah missed the first part of what Haley said. “Say that again.”

“Maggie O’Malley, the young lady we were talking about right before you left. We told you she’d been released since they couldn’t charge her with anything. But she’s a person of interest,” Haley repeated, speaking fast. “She came into the office right after you left. She asked for your number. She wants to hire you to find whoever is framing her for money laundering. Greg and I are starting to think she might actually be innocent. No one who is guilty can act that confused and terrified. I almost felt for the girl,” Haley said, the smile still in her voice.

“She wants to hire me?” Micah remained rooted where he stood, trying to make sense of what Haley just said. “To find a money launderer?”

“Yes.” Her voice regained its smooth, authoritative calmness. “If you aren’t interested, let me know. But we don’t have a problem with people we brought in seeking out our professional assistance to confirm their innocence. Sometimes they are innocent, other times they are really good cons until we break through their act and bring them in again. Either way, you have your license. If you want to do some moonlighting on the side and pull off some detective work, that’s fine with us.”

“I’ll let you know.”

*   *   *

Maggie wondered for the hundredth time if she was making a really big mistake. Things had barely settled down and returned to normal since she’d come home from the police station after damn near being arrested for something she didn’t do. Her mother had practically become hoarse yelling about how the country was shit down a pothole when a good American citizen was guilty until proven innocent.

John O’Malley would turn on his wife, pointing at her with his tobacco pipe that he hadn’t smoked in the house since Maggie’s older sister, Deidre, had been diagnosed with asthma. He would then bellow his disapproval loud enough for everyone in the house to hear.

“Saints preserve us all, woman!” he’d begin. “I served in two wars that made this country even stronger than it was when our parents came over. If Maggie had been in the old country, only the good Lord above knows how they might have treated her.”

If Maggie’s mother didn’t lighten up after his war comments, her father would throw the deadly retort that would silence the entire household. “If that daughter of mine had listened to her papa, believed for a moment he might have known what he was talking about, and steered clear of that no-good brother of yours, she wouldn’t be in trouble right now.”

The silence that followed hadn’t been a pleasant quiet. John and Lucy O’Malley wouldn’t storm to opposite ends of their home and stew about the intolerable nature of their spouse. They would both march into their bedroom, close the door, then sit on the edge of the bed, at the small desk in their room, or stand facing the window, and ignore each other.

Maggie’s brother Aiden had once said, “Even when they fight they do it together. They truly are the perfect couple.”

Maggie wasn’t sure screaming and yelling at each other qualified her parents as couple of the year, but after fifty years they were still married. It was more than many could say.

Either way, it had been several days since she’d come home from the police station. Her temper had cooled as well, and now it was time to do something about it. If the police thought they were being discreet following her everywhere she went, they were really lousy at their jobs. Well, just let them follow her across the city to the bounty-hunting office. See if she cared!

She hadn’t discussed hiring the bounty hunter with her parents—or with anyone, for that matter. There was no reason to start the ranting and raving all over again. Maggie had done her research, though. Bounty hunters were required to be licensed private investigators in the state of California. Micah Jones already knew everything about her situation. Hiring him made a lot more sense to her than seeking out a stranger and trying to explain the situation when she barely understood it herself. That is, if he was willing to investigate why anyone would have thought her guilty of a crime in the first place.

Her father had told her enough times that if she wasn’t comfortable discussing her actions before doing them, then they probably weren’t honorable enough to do. Ignoring her parents’ often-repeated dialogue, Maggie went with her gut on this one. There had been something about Micah Jones.

A man his size probably wasn’t afraid to do anything. Her brothers Aiden and Bernie were both just over six feet tall, although neither had the bulging muscles that Micah Jones did. Aiden and Bernie weren’t afraid of anything. Size had its advantages.

Micah was more than just tall. She’d seen something in his eyes. They weren’t exactly green. Maggie remembered flecks of light brown mixed with the green surrounding his focused pupils. She would say they were hazel. Still, it wasn’t his eye color that had stuck in her memory as much as the way he’d looked at her. It was as if he’d been able to search deep into her soul and had learned every secret about her in the few minutes he’d talked to her in her office. Of course, if that were actually true, he wouldn’t have hauled her out to the front of the club like some common criminal.

Maggie had been impressed with how Micah had handled Max, though. Max was a really large man. She’d never seen him look more dangerous than he had that day when Micah had sauntered in through the back door of the kitchen as if he’d owned the place. She and Max had formed a special bond that day. This entire mess sucked even more now because Max didn’t want to work at Club Paradise anymore. He couldn’t be associated with criminals through the terms of his parole. Maggie wasn’t a criminal, but Uncle Larry was still listed as the owner of Club Paradise.

God help her! This entire ordeal was a serious mess. Part of her wanted to wash her hands of the club, too. But another part of her argued she’d invested too much time and effort to leave Club Paradise, which had been a dive when she’d first started working there and was now a successful nightclub.

If Micah Jones was willing to do some work on the side, she would bet he’d be able to find who was behind making her look guilty of a crime she didn’t commit. As much as she loved her uncle Larry, she was starting to believe he had done something terrible involving the club. Maggie might be a good accountant, but she couldn’t see anything through her books that showed any illegal money entering the business.

She’d found KFA’s business address off paperwork connected to her uncle Larry. She was still livid that he’d lied to her and said he’d kept his court date. If he’d just shown up like he was supposed to, none of this would have happened. But she was just as mad at herself for believing she could keep Uncle Larry out of trouble when trouble had been his middle name for as long as she could remember.

The people at KFA had been willing to give her contact information for Micah Jones. The first step was done. Glancing around as she sat in her driver’s seat, she didn’t see any nondescript car parked anywhere along the long stretch of road where KFA was located.

Maggie punched in the phone number for Micah Jones. It rang only once before he answered. She barely had time to gather her thoughts.