An Angel In Stone. Peggy Nicholson
the block! And here she came, riding hell-for-leather down the middle of the road. Distract him now!
He popped up, bounced a shot off the pavement at Clinton’s feet, then dived for the next car under withering fire. He popped up again, squeezed the trigger, and—
And—dammit all—Clinton had seen him try. So much for bluffing. Cade threw the gun at his head.
Clinton dodged it, then straightened with an ugly grin. “All out, hero? Well, ain’t that a pity, ’cause I sure saved one for you!”
Sirens whooped, blue lights flashed down at the Columbus Ave. end of the block. Finally, somebody had clued in the cops.
Too late. Clinton tossed the ends of his hostage’s tie aside. He took loving aim on Cade, savoring the moment—then paused. His grin faded to frustration. “I really am gonna shoot you.”
“Got that. You want me to cry about it?” Hold his gaze. Hold him while the hoofbeats hammered louder and louder, or was that Cade’s own heart?
“Suit yourself. You can always cry aft—” Clinton spun. Froze before the oncoming apparition: flash of long bare legs and red silk, horse big as a truck and growing bigger by the second. His jaw dropped, his gun drooped from nerveless fingers.
He’d let go of Trenton, so maybe she didn’t need her knife. Jamming it back in its sheath, Raine braced her weight in her right stirrup as she leaned down. Reached. Her target’s eyes grew wide…wider…his mouth a rounding O of horror. Just love a man with a tie! She grabbed it at the knot—“Ooof!”—and kept on riding.
“Aaaaagh! Urrkkk!” He tripped—somehow found his feet as she yanked him up—to bound, stumbling and shrieking, alongside the thundering bay.
Thirty feet down the block, she flung him to the pavement and galloped on.
“Hey, cowgirl!”
Once she’d reined her mount to a snorting, curvetting trot, she glanced behind.
Cade sat midstreet on Clinton’s back. Making himself quite comfortable, it looked like. “Where d’you think you’re going?”
Sticking around here answering police questions all night would be a total bore. They had plenty of witnesses without her. And Trenton had stumbled to his feet, looking shaken, but fine. She’d call him tomorrow, but as for now—“Got a hot date at midnight, remember?” she called, brushing her tangled hair back from a wicked smile.
Intent on the downed shooter, a wave of cops stormed past her on either side. Raine walked her horse docilely to the corner and peered uptown. Here came a cab, miraculously with its light on. “Taxi!”
When it pulled into the curb, she swung down and tied the bay to a lamppost. “I owe you a bushel of apples, sweetie.” She slid in behind the goggle-eyed cabbie. “Brooklyn Bridge, please.”
Hot date? Oh, yeah, we’ve got a date. Ignoring the shouted questions as New York City’s finest bent over him, Cade stared after the taxi. And if you think make-up sex is fun, try almost-got-shot sex, was the thought dancing round his mind.
Even if she was the enemy.
Chapter 5
“H ow did Cade know that I love the Brooklyn Bridge?” Raine wondered as she approached its first tower. Or was this simply another sign that their minds marched in step?
Whenever Raine passed through New York, she walked the bridge. She hadn’t done so yet, this trip. And always before she’d come at dawn or sunset. Now she shivered with anticipation as its massive suspension cables curved upward to either side of the boardwalk. “Don’t look back,” she encouraged herself. “No-ot yet. You can do it.”
Already she’d walked almost a quarter mile up the gradually rising ramp from street level. She was out over the East River itself—must be at least ten stories up in the air and still climbing. Beyond the bridge’s first tower, Brooklyn was a molten glow on the opposite shore, while Raine could feel Manhattan, looming at her back.
On the roadway some twenty feet below the pedestrian walk, a car rushed past, fleeing the city. Tires growled on concrete, a radio wailed. A cool glissando of sax and trumpet drifted back on the salty air and Raine shuddered with pleasure. Rubbing the goose bumps on her bare arms, she took a deep breath—and turned. “Sha-zamm!”
Palisades of light scraped a buttermilk sky—a jagged dazzle of gold and silver, blinking red and strobing white. Diamond rivers of headlights; streaming ruby taillights. While serene in its own beauty, a fat saffron moon smiled above this electric city of neon-crazed cliff dwellers.
The shout of “Hey! Bike on your right!” brought Raine back to her senses. The rider whizzed past, helmeted head tucked to his handlebars, massive calves pumping. “Damn tourists!”
“Sorry!” Raine laughed after him.
On she strolled, swinging occasionally to drift backward like a child leaving the movie theater, shaking her head with incredulous delight. Born and raised in the wide-open West, she’d never make a city girl. Yet at times like this she could see why New Yorkers thought the sun revolved around their own special little island.
Like the rough granite face of a cathedral, the bridge’s first tower reared into the dark. The boardwalk split and flowed to either side of the central stone column, then rejoined on its far side. Rounding it, Raine almost bumped into a desperately kissing couple.
Her thighs tightened in reflex. Her nipples brushed against the silk of her dress. Aftermath of adrenaline, she admitted ruefully as she skirted the clinch—that and the knowledge that she should meet Kincade anytime now. “If he could get away from the police,” she muttered to herself. They might keep him half the night.
But Raine didn’t believe it. He’d come. Something about the man told her that for better or worse he kept his promises. “A fossil of great rarity and interest,” she repeated, her blood surging with the thought. If he really had one to sell, she meant to acquire it!
Ashaway All wasn’t a nonprofit museum that could throw its money around, but a business, with a business’s constant need to score. But would the attraction she’d felt for Cade survive a half–hour of hard-nosed negotiations? He didn’t look as though he’d be a pushover, when it came to bargaining. She was no cream puff herself, while cutting a deal. “Whatever.” If it came to a choice, rare fossils were in shorter supply than sexy men.
Yet nobody waited on the boardwalk ahead. “Still time,” Raine comforted herself.
Beyond the first tower, the view of the East River opened out to either side—a black velvet shawl crinkled with moonlight, spangled with gliding navigation lights. A tug trudged upstream against the monstrous outgoing tide. Nimble as a water bug, an airfoil ferry spun out from a pier below Wall Street. It rumbled off toward the outer harbor, trailing a widening wake of creamy foam.
“Whoa—baby! Check it out!”
Raine bobbled a stride, then walked grimly on. Up ahead on her right, three young men had balanced their way out one of the iron beams that stretched above the traffic lanes on the deck beneath. This idiot feat took them out to the actual edge of the bridge, where they could look straight down to the water, some hundred and fifty feet below—or jump, if they were so inclined.
They looked more the type to push somebody else, than to jump. “Hey, bitch! Want some company?”
“Sure she does! She dressed up just for me!”
Without a word, Raine walked on, passing the point where their beam intersected the waist-high side rail of the footbridge.
They weren’t the type to take a hint. Here they came, catcalling and clowning as they wobbled back along the girder with their arms outstretched.
Not a bicycle cop in sight, nor anybody else. Raine sighed as she stopped to skim her gown up to midthigh. Definitely a side zipper next time.
Behind