To Trust a Stranger Read online

  That was eight years ago. A lot of water had gone under the bridge since then, including his own firing from the Charleston PD, which Sid, the corrupt bastard, had almost certainly orchestrated. But that was just a tiny part of his beef with Sid. The major part, the part that Mac could never forget, concerned his brother. Daniel, who had been eight years his senior, had vanished some fifteen years before. And Mac had grown increasingly convinced that Sid, Daniel’s friend from childhood, at the very least knew what had happened to him.

  At first, they—his mother, his grandmother, and himself, Daniel’s family—thought Daniel had simply taken off somewhere. He’d been twenty-five years old at the time, after all, and a free spirit if there ever was one. Then, when months passed without a word, they began to wonder if perhaps he’d gotten in some kind of a jam and was lying low. As months turned into years, they had entertained theories ranging from a foreign prison to amnesia. Mac’s mother had died ten years ago, still uncertain about her older son’s fate and grieving at his absence. Mac had promised her on her deathbed that he would find his brother. So far he hadn’t been able to make good on that promise.

  The last time he had talked to Daniel had been during a hurried telephone call. His brother had begged out of a basketball game he’d promised to take then seventeen-year-old Mac to because of a job he had to do for Richie. Richie—as in Richie Rich—was their private nickname for Sid, because Sid lived a life that seemed dazzlingly opulent to two working-class sons of a dead-in-the-line-of-duty cop. Something in Daniel’s tone had made Mac think that whatever the “job” was, it was not the nine-to-five variety, but Mac hadn’t asked and Daniel hadn’t been any more specific than that. Once he’d become a cop himself, Mac had, quietly and on his own time, started searching for his brother, and checking Sid out had been right there at the top of his to-do list. He hadn’t really expected to find much on Richie Rich, but what he’d turned up had surprised him. Sid’s first wife, for example, had walked out on their marriage at about the same time that Daniel had disappeared. Interestingly enough, she couldn’t be found. And word on the street was that Sid was involved in the drug trade. Given Daniel’s apparently comfortable finances, his lack of a steady job after leaving the military, and his renewed involvement with childhood friend Sid, Mac had come to suspect that Daniel’s “job” for Sid and his subsequent disappearance could both be linked to a drug operation Sid was running. But he couldn’t prove it. Nobody in authority seemed at all interested in taking up the investigation. The Carlsons were VIPs in South Carolina, after all, with friends in high places, and nobody wanted to call the wrath of the powers that be down upon his own head. The consensus had been shut up, get over your brother, and find something else to do. It didn’t help that Daniel had spent years flirting with the wrong side of the law. It also didn’t help that the ex-wife was from California, that home of all things degenerate, where she’d presumably returned before dropping out of sight.

  In the end, as was none too gently pointed out to him, all he had on Sid was basically gossip. When he’d persevered, trying to get proof of illegal activity, he’d ended up getting his ass kicked off the force.

  Now, through the kind of twist of fate that Mac had almost quit believing in, he was being given a second chance to get at some answers: Sid’s beauty-queen bride was sitting in his car with him, looking sexy as hell in an itty-bitty pink satin getup that played up all her best points, in a jam and scared of her husband and turning to him for help.

  Suddenly the gods were smiling on him.

  He fished his cell phone out of his cleavage—it was lodged in there right along with the wad of athletic socks that served as his right tit, while his Glock nestled securely under the wad on the left—punched a button, and started the car, all at approximately the same time. The AC blasted out hot air. He turned it down and rolled down the windows until the interior could reach a decent temperature. Street sounds formed a steady background noise not unlike the buzz of a giant insect.

  “Uh, wait a minute.” Julie Carlson sounded uneasy. The look she sent him was wary. God, she was a pretty thing. Sid had always been about a million times luckier than he deserved, and his wife was no exception.

  “Sit tight,” he said to her with a quick, meant-to-be-reassuring smile that he had no idea struck its recipient as downright scary, framed as it was in scarlet lipstick and platinum curls. He put the Blazer in reverse before she could say anything else and then spoke into the phone as Hinkle answered. “Yo. Change of plan. Get over to 85 Dumesnil Street and get some pictures. Edwards is having a party and I want an album.”

  “Me?” Hinkle squawked, his disembodied voice making his displeasure clear. “What about you? You seemed to be getting along with him real good. You turnin’ tail now that the going’s getting tough, you chicken shit?”

  “Somebody hit my car, and I’ve got to sort it out. It’s going to take a while. Get those pictures.” He drove toward the exit. Now that they were moving, there was a breeze, which made the temperature inside the car almost bearable. Beside him, his passenger was looking more uneasy than ever. Mac smiled at her again. Sid’s wife falling into his lap like this was the most promising thing that had happened to him in a long time, and he meant to make the most of it.

  “Edwards doesn’t know me from crap,” Hinkle said. “How’m I supposed to get in?”

  “Take a pizza. Pretend you’re delivering. Hell, just walk in. Nobody’ll notice. Edwards is drunk off his ass, and apparently there’s going to be quite a crowd.” There was a break in the traffic. Mac pulled out behind a big white Caddy and headed south. If the thieves were pros—and they almost certainly were—the Jaguar was long gone. But it was always possible she’d been robbed by a couple of kids out for a joyride, in which case the car might have been abandoned somewhere nearby.

  “I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Julie Carlson said. “Would you take me back to the parking lot, please?”

  Mac caught her eye, held up one finger—wait a minute—and gave her another of those reassuring smiles. He watched her glance down at the cell phone in her hand and hesitate, and then he tracked her other hand as it crept up the door toward the handle. Was she thinking about jumping out? Not unless she had a death wish. The street was jammed with cars, and at this time of night it was a good bet that most of the drivers were feeling no pain. If he’d still been a cop, he could have done a month’s worth of busts right here, knocking on windows and hauling the over-the-limit ones in.

  “Yeah, like nobody’s gonna notice a straight black man taking pictures at a gay white guy’s orgy. I’m gonna get my ass kicked.” Hinkle’s gloomy-sounding voice spoke in his ear. “Shit. This always happens. Every damned time.”

  “Got to go,” Mac said as he stopped at a traffic light, saw Julie Carlson’s fingers curl around the door handle, and broke the connection.

  “What was that all about?” She was looking at him apprehensively.

  “I was supposed to take some pictures at a party, and now, thanks to you, I can’t make it. A friend’s going instead.” Mac shot her a quick, assessing glance as he folded the phone and dropped it back down inside his blouse. There wasn’t much positive he could say about the size-42DD Maidenform that was even now threatening to cut him in two, except that it made a hell of a holster for phone and pistol alike. That elastic was strong stuff. If NASA hadn’t discovered it, somebody should clue them in.

  He looked pointedly at her hand on the door handle. “You planning on getting out?”

  “N-no.” She looked guilty as hell. Her hand dropped back down into her lap.

  “Because if you did, it could be dangerous.”

  She blanched.

  Frowning, he spelled it out. “You could get hit by a car.”

  The light changed, and Mac went through the intersection, heading down toward the Battery, which in his estimation was the most likely place to discover an abandoned car. The air coming out of the vents now was cool, and Mac rolled the
windows up with a touch of a button. She sucked in her breath.

  “Um, where are we going?” she asked, real polite. Her hands were in her lap now, clasped around the cell phone, and she was chewing on her lower lip. She looked sexy as hell doing that. Mac noticed, and wished he hadn’t. Getting turned on by Sid’s sex-kitten wife was no part of his plan.

  “You worried you’re being kidnapped?” Realization dawned. There was amusement in his tone.

  She stopped chewing on her lip, thank God, and her eyes shot to his face.

  “Maybe. Am I?”

  He had to give her this: she was no shrinking violet. There was challenge in the question, and in the look she gave him. His estimation of Sid’s wife scooted a notch higher, even though it meant awarding Sid points for good taste.

  “Nah. You’re as safe with me as you would be with your own mama, I promise,” he said soothingly, and turned right, onto an even more run-down street than the one they had left. Drunks and whores and people looking for trouble roamed the sidewalks here, ducking into seedy bars, keeping to the shadows away from the streetlights. Like cockroaches, most of these folks did their scuttling at night. Unlike cockroaches, some of them could be deadly. Fortunately, Mac knew the score.

  “Look, Debbie, now that I’ve had time to think it over I think I’ll just call the police.” She lifted her cell phone ostentatiously; her forefinger hovered over the keypad without touching the buttons.

  Debbie? For a moment Mac was at a loss. Then he remembered his new persona, and grinned. Debbie—his ex-wife’s name, conjured up out of the blue when he’d glanced into the mirror in the ladies’ room at the Pink Pussycat and noticed that, except for the height and shoulders, he kind of resembled her—definitely was not a normal-looking person. No wonder she was nervous.

  “I thought you didn’t want your husband to know you’re out.”

  She started chewing her lower lip again. Mac, noticing, forced himself to concentrate on scanning the street for her stolen car. The hand holding the cell phone wavered.

  “I don’t.” Her voice was low. “But . . .”

  “So how about if we see if we can’t find your car?”

  She sucked in her breath, and her gaze flew to his face. “Do you think that’s even remotely possible?”

  Mac felt a stab of compunction. Being married to Sid was obviously no picnic, and she was looking to him for help. But he was going to help her, he quieted his nascent knight-in-shining-armor, even if there was an ulterior motive to his assistance. At least, he was going to do what he could to get her car back for her. After that, he made no promises.

  He’d been gunning for Sid for too long to let a little thing like a flare of sympathy for his wife hold him back.

  “Maybe. Sounds like somebody put in an order for a Jaguar of the same make and model as yours. Either for parts, or somebody wants to acquire one on the cheap. I’m betting on parts, though.”

  “Somebody put in an order?” Her tone was disbelieving, but she dropped the cell phone back to her lap.

  He turned onto Bay Street and sped up to pass one of the horse-drawn carriages that took tourists on sightseeing rides at all hours of the day and night and were a menace to traffic all over the city. In the distance, the bay looked black as oil except for an occasional string of lights that signified a boat. A foghorn gave its lonely call.

  “Happens all the time, especially with a high-end car like yours.”

  Her thighs were pressed tightly together, he noticed, her long, slim, and shapely thighs that were bare beneath the crotch-high hem of the pink satin shorts she wore. Glancing down at them—he couldn’t help himself—he found himself wondering if her skin tasted as much like honey as it looked. Annoyed at the direction his thoughts were taking, he shifted his gaze back out to the street where it belonged and picked up his phone.

  “License-plate number?” he asked crisply, confining his gaze to her face now as he punched in some numbers. She told him, and he nodded.

  “Yeah?” The grumpy-sounding voice on the other end of the phone belonged to Mother Jones. Mother was the go-to man for all the local car thieves; as a gung-ho rookie police officer Mac had arrested him twice in his first two months on the job, been first infuriated and then chagrined to discover that Mother was back on the streets within twenty-four hours each time, and then got clued in to the program before any real harm was done to Mother’s operation or his own career. Fortunately, Mother was not one to bear grudges, and what with one thing and another, they’d ended up developing a mutual respect that had turned into almost a friendship over the years. If anybody could get information on a just-pinched Jaguar in south Charleston, Mother was the man.

  “What you interested in it for?” Mother asked cautiously, when Mac gave him the particulars. At times like this, Mother tended to remember that Mac had once been on the other side.

  “Lady who owns it is a friend of mine. Her husband’s gonna go ape-shit when he finds out she let it get stolen, and she’s sitting here beside me right now crying her eyes out, afraid she’s gonna get beat up when she goes home.”

  Julie Carlson stiffened and looked at him indignantly. Mac shook his head at her, warning her to silence.

  “Shee-it.” Mother tut-tutted under his breath, and Mac knew he had punched the right buttons. Mother was a devoted family man with six daughters. “Ain’t no call for that kind of shit, you know? Man who’d rough up his woman, he ought to have his ass kicked.”

  “Yeah,” Mac said, agreeing. “Can you help us out here?”

  There was a pause. “If I can, you know it gonna cost you.”

  “No problem.” He figured Julie Carlson was good for it. Hell, Sid was rich enough.

  A grunt. “I’ll make some calls, see what I can do. I’ll let you know. What’s the number?”

  Mac gave him his cell-phone number, disconnected, and glanced at his frowning passenger.

  “It’s going to cost you to get your car back. Probably about a couple of thousand. If it can be done.”

  “I heard.” She sounded disgusted. “I can’t believe I have to pay to get my own car back.”

  “You don’t want to, I’ll call Mother back and tell him to forget it.”

  “No.” There was a sudden note of panic in her voice, and her hands tightened on her phone. “No, I want it.”

  Mac’s lips compressed. She was definitely afraid of Sid. Under the circumstances, feeling sorry for her was a mistake, but feel sorry for her he did.

  “Mother’s going to want the money on delivery. If we’re lucky, and he can find your car.”

  She looked worried. “I can write him a check. That is, if he brings back my purse, too. It was in the car.”

  A check. Mac sighed. “Darlin’, he’s going to want cash.”

  Now she was looking really worried. “I only have about fifty dollars in my purse. I can go to an ATM machine when I get it back, but I think the limit for withdrawals is two hundred dollars.”

  Mac thought of the cash advance Elizabeth Edwards had given him only hours earlier. It was stashed in the safe at his house, ready to be deposited in the bank bright and early in the morning. He pictured Hinkle’s reaction if he knew what Mac was about to do, made up his mind, and mentally flipped Hinkle the bird. “I got it covered. As long as you’re good for it. You are good for it, right?”

  Sid’s wife was definitely not a credit risk, and obviously she had an urgent reason to keep Sid from finding out what she had been up to tonight. The satin thingy she was wearing told its own story. She wouldn’t stiff him.

  “Yes. Oh, yes. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” His voice was dry. The idea of Julie Carlson cavorting with a boyfriend was cheering, considering who she was married to, but unfortunately it got his thoughts going where they shouldn’t again. She was hot stuff, no doubt about it—but, he reminded himself sternly, she wasn’t bed material. Not for him.

  What she was, if the gods continued in their current good mood, might j
ust be the inside source he needed to finally get the goods on Sid. He would help her out of her present difficulty, and in the process pump her for all the information he could get.

  Mac smiled as he turned down his street, a quiet row of small, single-story, tile-roofed homes that were reasonably well maintained but had seen better days, and parked at the curb. A motley collection of other cars had done likewise all up and down the street.

  “Where are we?” She was sounding nervous again.

  “My house. I happen to have some cash on hand. Besides, Mother finds your car, we’re going to have to meet with him to get it back. It’d be better for my reputation if he doesn’t see me like this.” He made a gesture encompassing his finery.

  “Oh.” She looked him up and down, and her expression turned faintly sympathetic as her gaze met his. “He doesn’t—know?”

  “No,” Mac said, refusing to acknowledge how sweet she sounded. He shut off the ignition. “He doesn’t know. You coming in? You can wait in the car if it makes you feel safer.”

  She took another look around at the dark street, which was deserted except for old Mr. Leiferman down at the corner waiting under the streetlight for his Boston terrier to do his business, and shook her head.

  “I’ll come in with you, if you don’t mind,” she said, just as he’d been pretty sure she would.

  She opened the door and slid out. He pulled the wig off, tossed it into the backseat, and scratched his head vigorously. Then he got out himself, locked the car, and headed for his front door. He could hear the delicate swish of her satin shorts as she walked beside him, and tried to shut his ears to the sound.