Slow heat, p.5
Slow Heat, page 5
“We found out earlier today. I just got off the phone with Annalisa.”
Maggie’s radar went up instantly. “What are you doing, Mom?”
Annalisa never talked to her parents, not since they’d made a scene in front of her boyfriend because he was black. Maggie talked to her baby sister from time to time, but for the most part Annalisa had cut all ties with the family.
“Aiden just showed up. And I’m making my famous sausage meatballs,” her mom informed her, neatly avoiding the real meaning behind Maggie’s question.
Maggie groaned. She wouldn’t set her mom off. Maggie couldn’t remember the last time her entire family had been under one roof. There was only one reason why they would all be there on such short notice. “Did you tell everyone the police talked to me, Mom?”
“Everyone is worried about you, sweetheart. As they should be. We’re family and we stick together when something bad happens.” Her mother lowered her voice as she continued. “And yes, I told your brothers and sisters. Of course, everyone is worried about your Uncle Larry, too.”
Suddenly it all made sense. Her mother was doing this for her father. Maggie’s dad hated all of his children being so spread apart. If the world rotated on its axis the way John O’Malley would have it, all of his children would be on the same block they lived on and cranking out grandbabies for him to spoil. Her parents had fought terribly after Maggie got home from the police station. It had made Maggie sick. Her mother’s health wasn’t great in the best of times, and she’d looked seriously rundown the past day or so. But her mother had rounded up the family, not just because they would all want to know about Maggie, but to make her father feel better.
“You’ll be here soon?” Her mother barely made it a question.
Well, that would cut into the time she might need to persuade Micah to help her. If she didn’t show up at the house soon, her parents would send the O’Malley army out looking for her. After promising not to be long and using the argument that traffic was a nightmare, Maggie got off the phone, confirmed where she was on Google Maps, and drove the last few blocks to Micah’s house.
Micah Jones didn’t live as extravagantly as the Kings did. Maggie parked in front of a rundown small house with a narrow cracked cement driveway leading up to a detached garage. After confirming it would be a twenty-minute drive, at least, to her house from Micah’s, Maggie got out of her car and locked it.
“Stay calm,” she ordered herself, and did her best to ignore her pounding heart when she walked up the drive to the front door.
*
Micah watched Maggie O’Malley walk up to his house through his partially closed living room curtains. There had been something about her auburn hair, pulled back from a face with very little makeup, that at first he’d thought made her look innocent. Now, watching her as she looked down, stepping over the cracks in the drive, with her hair today tucked behind her ears and partially covering her face, he had a chance to see Maggie in a new light.
Most of the time when people were released because charges couldn’t be pressed, they started living under the radar, or they ran. Then their name would inevitably pop back up on the bounty hunter’s list. They’d been released. They’d taken off. The DA or FBI finally had viable evidence to book them but couldn’t find them. Once again, it became the bounty hunter’s job to track them down. Micah was actually starting to like this line of work. At least as a bounty hunter, he still got to hunt and capture. He just didn’t kill. Money wasn’t everything. Peace of mind often proved just as necessary and desirable.
Maggie wasn’t running. Four days ago the police had let her go. If he were to step outside it wouldn’t surprise him if he found an unmarked car parked somewhere on his street. They would be watching her. And more than likely right now they were as confused as he was. If she was guilty, why would she return to the bounty hunter who very well may be asked to track her down in the near future?
Maggie walked in front of the window without looking in his direction and tapped on his door. She was possibly one cocky bitch. Maybe she believed she could outsmart him. Micah had no problem tangling with a beautiful young lady.
Or the possibility existed that she truly was innocent.
Micah stared at his front door. Maggie rapped on it several times. He no longer saw her through the window. He waited a breath then unlocked and opened the door.
“Micah Jones.” She combed her fingers through her hair, dragging long, thick strands to the back of her head where they fell and draped around her oval-shaped face. It fell as it did in those shampoo commercials, thick, shiny, healthy-looking hair that was tangle-free. She absently tucked one side behind her ear. “We haven’t been formally introduced.”
That was an understatement. “We already know each other.” Micah stood to the side, pulling his front door far enough open for her to enter. Maggie remained standing in the doorway.
He seriously doubted someone who was working in a club that was a cover for money laundering—guilty or not, Maggie had to know that much—was going to stand on propriety and not enter a single man’s home without introduction. Maybe she was trying to make an impression. He wasn’t going to discuss shit with her while she stood on his front stoop. There was some outstanding spy equipment out there, and LAPD probably had their share of it. Microphones could pick up conversations easily a block away while a couple of bored cops sat in their car and listened.
Micah cleared his throat. “Welcome to my home, Miss O’Malley.” He leaned on the doorknob with one hand and stared at her bright blue eyes. “Are you going to stand in the doorway and interview me, or come in?”
Maggie shot him a scathing look. It disappeared quickly and she took a step into his living room. Micah began closing the door, forcing her to enter farther. He watched her look around his place. When she turned and faced him, clasping her hands together, her expression was blank, relaxed, and impressively unreadable.
“Since this is your area of expertise, and not mine, I don’t feel there is a need to interview you. I’m here to hire you to find whoever is truly guilty of this money-laundering crime the police believe I committed. How much do you charge?”
Micah hid his smile. Already she was reaching for her purse. If she paid him cash, he’d be obligated to turn the money in and determine if it was part of the cash being laundered. He doubted she could write a check. Micah was pretty sure her accounts had been frozen.
“That all depends on what you want me to do.” He closed and locked his front door then moved around her, leaving the living room for his adjoining dining room. There was no dining room table—just two sets of bookshelves and his extra dresser, where he housed clothes he didn’t wear as often and other odds and ends he preferred not to be on display if anyone were to come over. Such as his guns, and the knife collection his uncle had given him at his confirmation. “Apparently you believe, as the police do, that Larry Santinos was only a front man and not the brains behind all this.”
“Uncle Larry still claims he hasn’t done anything wrong,” she said from behind him. It wasn’t clear by her tone if she believed that or not.
Micah entered his kitchen, flipped on his light, and opened his refrigerator. He would process her slowly. “Do you want a beer?”
“No, thank you.” She was still in his living room.
Micah twisted off the cap of one bottle of beer and held another bottle in his hand. He kicked the refrigerator door shut with his boot and sauntered back to his living room. Maggie remained in the middle of the room where he’d left her.
“You sure?” He held up the unopened bottle.
Maggie shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking,” she began, and looked around his living room. She looked everywhere but at him.
Micah set the unopened bottle of beer on his coffee table then walked around it. He cleared the stack of newspapers from the corner of the couch, dropped them to the floor by his feet, then sat. He wasn’t going to take the lead here. Taking a long sip of the cold beer, he studied Maggie O’Malley.
“What am I thinking?” he asked, tilting his head and watching her as she appeared to become more and more uncomfortable. He hadn’t asked her over to his place. This was her show, and he’d let her play it out. He didn’t see any reason to go out of his way to make her comfortable. Unless, of course, she thought that he was considering how she would look naked. In which case, if she were to oblige and show him, he’d make her very comfortable.
She was thin, but not anorexic like too many women were these days. The straight-cut tan skirt she wore hugged her curvy hips and flat tummy. It showed off long, slender legs that at the moment were pressed tightly together. Her anklebones touched each other and her brown sandal straps draped over slender, small feet. Her toenails and fingernails were both painted pink.
He let his gaze travel back up her in the next moment. Micah had no intention of making her anymore uncomfortable than she was making herself. He didn’t have to gawk to appreciate how her sleeveless fluffy-looking sweater had a deep V-shaped collar. It ended just above the middle of her breasts. This was the second time he’d seen her and the second time she’d worn clothes that showed off her cleavage. Her decent-sized boobs were obviously something about herself that she liked. He most definitely appreciated the view.
Micah would never reveal to a soul how many people he’d killed in his life. He’d killed more than one incredibly beautiful woman in cold blood. None of them glowed the way Maggie did. Even as she fidgeted, either waiting for him to say more or choosing her words carefully, he sensed something in her that he didn’t often see.
Was it innocence?
He already knew she was a spitfire. She was intelligent enough to manage the books for a nightclub, legitimate or not. Micah knew better than to pass judgment this soon.
Maggie met his gaze with a mixture of awe and fear, and something else, not quite so subtle, but Micah was aware of it nonetheless.
Curiosity. Lust. Sexual awareness.
“If you think I’m guilty, this isn’t going to work,” Maggie snapped suddenly. If that’s what she thought he was thinking, she was way off base. Her eyes narrowed, and her pencil-thin eyebrows closed together. “Tell me that you were simply doing your job earlier this week and we might be able to work together. But, Mr. Jones, if you believe I am guilty of stealing money from my own club, then I want to know right now.”
“I honestly don’t have an opinion one way or another.” Spitfire might have been an understatement. Maggie had a serious Irish temper. “Prove to me you’re innocent.” He leaned back, crossed one leg over the other, and rested his boots on his coffee table.
Maggie watched the act, swallowing slowly, then licked her lips. He could see the bra line through her sweater and as he watched, her nipples grew hard, puckering slightly against the fuzzy material.
“How can I prove my innocence?” she demanded, extending her arms and then dropping them, sighing loudly. Her blue eyes flashed vibrantly, and for the first time her gaze traveled up the length of his body. “I don’t even fully understand what they’re trying to charge me with.”
“You don’t?”
Instead of answering, Maggie crossed her arms and met his gaze head-on, glaring at him as if his question were preposterous. All she could possibly know about him was where he worked, where he lived, and that he was easily twice as strong as her and with skills she didn’t possess. Skills to chase down, capture, and arrest men and women who had bounties on their heads. Yet she glared at him as if she’d take him on right then and there. He liked that about her. Micah had a sudden desire to stand, move in on her, and test those tempting waters she was showing off to him.
“The cops think Club Paradise is a cover for illegal activity and that it isn’t actually making the money it claims to be making.” She dropped her purse on his coffee table next to the unopened beer. “Which is absolutely ridiculous,” she exclaimed, and began pacing in front of him. “They took my ledger book.” She stopped and pointed an accusing finger at Micah. “You took my ledger book. But someone also took my computer. If it weren’t for hard-copy backup files, I wouldn’t have a clue how to defend myself through all of this.”
He would have to check whether the police had searched her house. Micah would pretend he hadn’t heard what she just said, at least for right now. “Why is it ridiculous?”
Maggie stopped pacing, faced him, and put her hands on her hips, gaping. “Did you even look at my ledger book after taking it from me?”
“It was evidence.” When her expression didn’t change, he slowly shook his head. “I don’t make a habit of going through evidence. I handed it to my boss. You were there when I did it.”
“My uncle is locked up and I can’t talk to him.”
“Talking to him wouldn’t be a good idea.”
Again she looked at him as if he had two heads. “Uncle Larry isn’t smart enough to use a nightclub as a front to launder money.”
Micah stared at her. Did she really not see why she was the likely candidate behind this operation? Maybe she was one of those book-smart people who didn’t have a lot of common sense. If that were the case, and she were guilty, the cops would have gotten it out of her.
“Club Paradise is not being used as a front for money laundering,” she stressed.
“Do you understand what the charges are against your uncle?” he asked.
She narrowed her gaze on his. “Maybe you are the wrong person for this job. It’s not your responsibility to determine guilt or innocence. All you are is the hunting dog.”
He’d been called a lot worse. Micah straightened, pulling his feet off his coffee table. “I’m a bounty hunter,” he said simply.
“Then why did you come after me, too?”
“What did the police say to you?” he countered.
Maggie began pacing again. “Nothing. They wouldn’t answer any of my questions. But they sure had enough of their own.”
“What did they ask you?”
“Questions about the ledger, my bookkeeping.” When she paused again her smile was cool, with a hint of warped satisfaction. “They wanted to know where the other ledger was,” she said, then laughed drily. “Maybe I should be flattered that they thought me such a good bookkeeper. They went through my books, saw how perfectly well kept they were, and couldn’t find where all of this supposed illegal money is. Honestly, I’m not sure it exists. But when I asked them that?” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Lord, you’d think I’d asked to see the pope.”
“Detectives don’t usually like the implication that they’ve done their job wrong.”
“And I do?” she countered. But then she pointed her finger at him. “They fucked up big-time,” she hissed, that temper of hers flaring again. It made her eyes glow a beautiful dark shade of blue. “Maggie O’Malley doesn’t go down without a fight,” she announced, pounding her chest. “They think they can just follow me around town and I’ll commit some crime that will prove them right. They can’t admit they made a mistake. Like I would lead them to whoever is responsible for hiding some enormous amount of illegal money.”
“Then why come to me?” Not that he was complaining. At first he hadn’t thought Maggie his type. But he’d been wrong. Maggie was beautiful and he was enjoying the hell out of watching her pace back and forth across his small living room.
She spun around, her back to his dining room. Her shoulder-length auburn hair flipped over her shoulder and fanned across her face. She slapped it out of the way and heaved in a deep breath. Micah let his gaze fall to the swell of cleavage visible at the V of her sweater.
“I don’t want the police thinking I’m a criminal. I don’t want to be followed. I want my computer back. I want my life back!” she yelled. When her attention dropped to the floor, she blew out a breath and visibly deflated. “You don’t seem interested in helping me,” she mumbled, that Irish temper of hers completely gone. “Maybe it was a mistake coming here. What time is it? Where did I put my purse?”
He pointed to his coffee table where her purse sat next to the unopened beer. “It’s after six.”
“Crap. I need to get going.” She looked at him pointedly. “Will you help me or not? Will you find out who is really laundering money through my club?”
“You said it was ridiculous for anyone to be doing anything illegal in your club.”
“It is.” She walked over to her purse, pulled her cell phone out, and looked at it. “LAPD wouldn’t waste all this manpower if something weren’t wrong.”
It was the first seriously intelligent thing she’d said since entering his house. Micah studied Maggie. He really did believe she was innocent. None of the telltale signs that she was lying to him were there, such as glancing to the side instead of never making eye contact, mechanical movements that were the result of a rehearsed soliloquy prepared to convince him of her innocence, or speaking too fast, reciting lines previously memorized. Maggie looked at him, concerned, determined, and frightened. There was no pretense, nothing other than a beautiful young woman, proud of her work and shocked it had been labeled faulty.
Maggie didn’t know what to do. Something told him coming to him had been her last shot.
“You want me to snoop around, ask questions, do some research and find out why someone like your uncle could be charged with such a sophisticated crime. And what if I find out your uncle isn’t as stupid as everyone thinks?” He’d be smart to tell her no. If he helped her, it might draw more attention to him than he could afford. He should stand up, escort her to the door, wish her the best of luck, and send her on her way.
“I think Uncle Larry is guilty of just that,” she mumbled, “being stupid.”
“I’m not cheap,” he said, and his insides tightened when she looked at him quickly, laughing and almost crying at the same time.
“You’ll figure out what is really going on here,” she choked out, still smiling.
Her eyes were suddenly moist crystals, large blue orbs dancing with happiness. Maggie sincerely believed he could save her. The amount of power she placed in his hands with that look of sincere gratitude did something to him. The protector, the carnal predator that always existed just under Micah’s skin surfaced with a ferocity so strong, he almost growled.
