Page 10 of Deadly Threat
How many guys with that name lived in the city?
Rising from her chair, she hoisted the messenger bag onto her shoulder.Let him go, her brain chanted.
Besides, if hewaswho he claimed, he deserved better than her.
And if he was some leftover from the Quattro Gang…
She reached for the stun gun, worrying it a bit inside the bag. Damon was gone and it was time to live again, like Amber said. Mia had to stop fearing every shadow, every…
Coincidence.
The word rankled, no matter how she examined it. Her nerves felt too sensitive, clawed by the idea that she might be duped again.
Ladybug pawed at her shin. “It’s fate,” her mom had told her after the ordeal when Ladybug had crawled into her lap in the hospital room. “She’ll help you, just like she did Millicent.”
Mili. Their younger sister, diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia at sixteen years old. Ladybug had been her therapy dog. Five years after Mili’s death, the animal was now Mia’s.
Fate. Was there such a thing?
Ladybug tugged her toward the door.
Four
Malachi told himself it was no big deal that she hadn’t told him her name as he ambled down the damp sidewalk toward the parking garage. If he did some digging, he could find out what it was. Father Delacroix probably knew it, and the librarians.
Hell, Joe, the Cahill brother with the hacking skills, could get into the library’s system and find it and her number in thirty seconds flat.
But that wasn’t fair, and downright stalker-ish. She’d obviously survived a trauma and felt uncomfortable giving a stranger her information. He respected that and would in no way undermine her wishes.
Damn, that smile, though. A ghost of one, anyway, that had lit up her face, her eyes. She’d attempted to hide it, and it had made him want to see it again, to do whatever it took to turn that light on and give her the courage to show it to him.
He crossed the alley to the next block. A nice, but conservative limo was parked at the curb. Three blocks down the steep hill, the traffic lights flipped from green to yellow, two cars coming to a stop. Their taillights flickered in the puddles on the wet road.
A lone, black SUV drove past. The overhead streetlight’s glow rolled over its windshield, the vehicle driving so slowly, it made his hackles rise. Whoever was inside was looking for something.
Or someone.
This part of town wasn’t without its criminal element. Street workers and drug dealers tended to hang in the shadows and alleys a few blocks over, but some bled onto this thoroughfare.
Voices echoed behind him and he glanced back to see several of the meeting attendees spilling out of the bedraggled church and conversing nearby.
He slowed and scanned those exiting for Ladybug and her owner. He didn’t immediately see them, but then…the woman was carrying the dog. Their eyes locked across the expanse and she smiled.
Malachi came to a dead stop, turning fully to watch her. Even this far from her, the way it transformed her face made his pulse skip. He lifted a hand in acknowledgment, and she did as well, striding confidently toward him.
His breath seemed to stop in his chest as he watched her maneuver around those loitering on the sidewalk. She hopped over a puddle in the alley entrance. The cigar shop he stood in front of had matching security lights in their two display windows, and the beams cast a soft glow onto her face as she and the dog caught up to him.
“I’ll be at the library again tomorrow morning,” she said. “If you need help with your homework, or you know, just want to hang out.”
His day was booked, but hell if he wouldn’t rearrange all of it to meet her. “Same time?”
She nodded and skirted past him, heading for the limo. “From the look of my current assignment,” she called back, “I’ll probably be there all week.”
From the corner of his eye, he registered the same vehicle driving by again. Or was this a different one? Black SUVs were a dime a dozen in this town, limos as well. He rotated to keep her in his sights. “I’ll be there.”
She glanced down, shy-like, smiling even broader. “Good.”
The chauffeur came around to open the door for her. “Evening, miss.”
