The Lady in Red & Dangerous Deception Page 3

  Her cheeks flushed at the gentle criticism. Darn the man, she should have caught that. And when she hadn’t, her editor should have! But she’d have eaten worms before admitting it. Instead, she purred silkily, “Why, Nickels, I’m flattered you went to the trouble to memorize my work. Are you one of our new subscribers? You should have told me and I might have been able to get you a discount.”

  “To the Record?” He snorted, amused. “I don’t think so. I like my news hard and gritty, and I’ll bet your readers do, too. In fact, I’ll bet you dinner at the restaurant of your choice that before the month is out, my paper, not yours, is winning the subscription war.”

  “Watch it, Nickels. I have expensive taste.”

  “So it’s a bet?”

  Hesitating, Sabrina reminded herself that he was a man who didn’t always play by the rules. And there were some very expensive restaurants in town. If she lost, she’d feel the blow not only in her pride, but in her pocketbook. But she’d never been one to play it safe, and there were some things a woman with daring just couldn’t walk away from. And Blake Nickels, she reluctantly admitted, was one of them.

  Grinning, she held out her hand and silently prayed she didn’t live to regret her impulsiveness. “You’re on, Nickels. If I were you, I’d start saving my pennies. This is going to cost you.”

  Chapter 2

  She was running late. Her alarm clock hadn’t gone off, and she’d unconsciously taken advantage of it, waking a mere ten minutes before she was due at work. Horrified, Sabrina jumped out of bed and threw on some clothes, but even moving at the speed of sound, it was well after she should have punched in at the paper when she slammed out of her house and dashed to her car. Mumbling reminders to get herself a new clock, she raced down the street, tires squealing, and headed for the freeway three blocks away.

  She’d barely shot onto the entrance ramp when she had to hit the brakes. A four-car pileup a half a mile ahead blocked all three lanes, slowing traffic to a virtual crawl. She’d be lucky if she made it in to the paper by noon.

  Fitz was not going to be pleased.

  Sabrina winced and rubbed at her temples, where a dull pounding started to hammer relentlessly. It was not, she decided, going to be a good morning. As far as bosses went, Fitz was a real gem when it came to letting her run with a story, but he was a real stickler when it came to reporting in in the morning. If you were going to be late, you’d better have a darn good excuse.

  Staring up ahead at the whirling lights of at least three patrol cars and two ambulances, Sabrina saw a uniformed officer slap handcuffs on one of the drivers and started to smile. This wasn’t evidently one of your average rush-hour fender benders. Things were starting to look up. Fitz wouldn’t be nearly as inclined to give her one of his patented speeches about punctuality if she came in with a story. Sending up a silent prayer of thanks for gifts from God, she eased over onto the shoulder of the freeway and raced down it toward the accident scene.

  It wasn’t noon when she rushed into the Daily Record, but it was pretty darn close to it. Glancing at the clock in the lobby, Sabrina winced. Fitz was going to have a hissy. It wouldn’t, she thought with an impish grin, be the first one that she’d caused. She seemed to have a talent for it where he was concerned.

  “Well, well, well,” a familiar, gruff voice drawled sarcastically as she stepped off the elevator and turned to come face-to-face with her boss. “If it isn’t our star reporter. And she’s actually putting in an appearance at work. Glad you could join us, Ms. Jones. I hope it wasn’t too much of an imposition.”

  Well used to the cutting edge of the old man’s tongue, she ignored his sarcasm and gave him a cheeky grin. “Not at all, boss. I’m sorry I’m late, but I knew you wouldn’t want me to leave the scene of a story—”

  “What story?”

  “A four-car pileup on the Loop. It seems that a red van was weaving back and forth between the lanes before it plowed into a car full of college kids from Austin on their way to the coast. The van driver was drunk as a skunk—and you’ll never guess who it was.”

  “Who?” he growled. “And this better be good, Jones. I’ve been trying to track you down all morning.”

  “I know it, boss, but I was stuck on the freeway with no way to call you. And it was the mayor’s son, Jason Grimes! He’d been out carousing all night in daddy’s car.”

  “What? Why the hell didn’t you say so?”

  Knowing she was forgiven, Sabrina laughed. “I would have given a hundred bucks to have had a camera. Nobody was hurt, but those kids from Austin were fighting mad when it looked like the cops were going to let Jason off the hook. He’s an obnoxious little brat at the best of times, but when he’s drunk, he’s an arrogant son of a gun. He made the mistake of telling one of the kids from Austin that his daddy would see that he didn’t even get a ticket for reckless driving, let alone arrested for a DWI, and the kid took a swing at him. He’s not quite as pretty as he used to be.”

  Fitz’s sharp gray eyes started to twinkle. “Now ain’t that a shame? And he was such a good-looking boy. Write it up, Jones. Then nose around down at the police station and see if you can find out what the policy has been in the past toward young Jason’s drunk driving. If he’s gotten special privileges, I want to know about it.”

  He started to turn away, only to remember her tardiness. Glancing over his shoulder, he warned, “And don’t be late again, Jones. Next time, you might not be lucky enough to have a story fall in your lap the way this one did.”

  “No, sir. I mean yes, sir, it won’t happen again.” Saluting smartly, she dared to wink at him. “I’ll get right on it.”

  He scowled like an old Scrooge, but Sabrina caught the twitch of his lips before he headed for his office. Chuckling to herself, she turned toward her own desk, her thoughts already jumping ahead to the opening line of her story.

  Distracted, she didn’t see the note lying right in the middle of her desk until she sat down and started to turn toward her computer monitor. Then she saw it—a single sheet of white, unlined paper folded in half with her name handwritten on the front. Perched precariously on top of some notes from yesterday’s bank robbery, it could have been left there by anyone—her co-workers left notes for her all the time. But those were handwritten on little yellow stickies, not typed ones on what looked like fairly expensive textured paper.

  Wondering who it was from, she reached for it and had a sudden image of Blake teasing her yesterday about her coverage of the Bishop murder. It would, she thought, unable to hold back a smile, be just like him to take it upon himself to critique another of her stories. Only this time, he’d put it in writing and obviously bribed someone in the lobby to deliver it to her desk, since there was no envelope. She could just imagine what it said.

  But when she leaned back in her chair and flipped the note open, her eyes dancing with expectancy, she saw in a single, all-encompassing glance that it wasn’t from Blake. Then the typed words registered and a cold chill crept like a winter fog through her bloodstream, chilling her to the bone.

  Sabrina,

  Tanya Bishop thought she could compete in a man’s world, and she was wrong. I tried to tell her differently. Women are the nurturers, the homemakers, the babymakers. They should be home, raising the next generation and saving the world, not having power lunches and taking jobs away from men who can do the work ten times better. It’s not right. I told Tanya that, but she wouldn’t listen. She laughed at my warning that she was in danger of upsetting the natural order of things. I didn’t want to kill her, but what else could I do? She didn’t know her place, so she had to be eliminated. She gave me no other choice.

  I know how your mind operates, Sabrina. You think I’m some kind of nut case looking for publicity for a murder I didn’t commit. But I really did kill her. We were friends. I hoped we could be more, but she couldn’t be what I wanted her to be. Who I wanted her to be. So I decided to end it and called to tell her I needed to see her. She was dressed in a
white gown and negligee and opened the door to me the second I rang the bell. That’s when I shot her. She fell right where she stood in the doorway, and I can’t feel bad about it. Other professional women might want to take heed while they still can.

  Stunned, her heart starting to pound in her ears, Sabrina stared at the cold, unfeeling words and told herself this was a hoax—one of her fellow reporters was probably watching her right now, grinning like an idiot as he waited for her reaction. But even as she cast a quick look around the city room, she knew deep in her gut that this was no practical joke. The note had a ring of truth to it, a sick logic, that sent goose bumps racing over her skin.

  Pale, her fingers not quite steady, she dropped the note as if it were a lit firecracker and reached for her phone, quickly pushing the button for the receptionist’s desk in the lobby. “Valerie,” she said as soon as the other woman came on the line, “this is Sabrina. Did anyone hand-deliver a note for me late yesterday afternoon or this morning?”

  “If they did, this is the first I’ve heard of it,” Valerie replied cheerfully. “Lydia Davidson in classifieds got flowers from her latest heartthrob, but other than that, things have been pretty quiet. Why?”

  “No reason,” Sabrina said quickly. “I was just wondering. If anyone does come in asking for me, let me know, okay? Thanks.”

  She hung up, frowning, refusing to even consider the possibility that Tanya Bishop’s killer had hand-delivered a note to her. If the thing was even legit, she amended silently. Whoever wrote it must have gotten one of the other staff members to drop it off at her desk. It was the only explanation.

  But when she asked around, she got nothing but negative answers. No one had passed a message on to her. No one had seen any strangers or visitors loitering around her desk. For all practical purposes, the note had simply appeared there and no one had a clue how.

  Not easily scared, Sabrina told herself she wasn’t worried. She could take care of herself—she always had. And if there was a threat in the note, it wasn’t meant for her. How could it be? She didn’t even know the killer. Whoever he was, he obviously wanted his fifteen minutes of fame, just like everybody else. She could give him that. But first she had to talk to Sam Kelly. Picking up her phone, she punched in the number for the police department.

  “C’mon, Kelly, I know you’ve got the coroner’s report—I called the ME’s office and asked,” Blake said with a grin as he lounged in the chair across the desk from the detective. “What’s the big secret? Everyone knows Tanya Bishop was shot in the heart. All I want is the time of death.”

  “You’ll get it just like everyone else at the press conference this afternoon at three,” Sam said firmly. “That gives you plenty of time to make the morning edition.”

  In years past, Blake had worked with detectives who hoarded information like misers stockpiling gold, giving it out in beggarly bits and pieces like they were doing the world a favor. Sam Kelly didn’t strike him that way. He didn’t play games or do anything that might have been considered unethical. He was a strictly by-the-book man, and Blake had to admire that. In a world where whole police departments were as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, it was nice to know there were men like Sam Kelly still hanging in there, doing things the right way, fighting the good fight. But it made getting information out of him damn difficult.

  “The morning edition’s not the problem,” he said ruefully, opting for the truth. “It’s Sabrina Jones.”

  His craggy face cracking in a smile, Sam leaned back in his chair and surveyed him knowingly. “So Sabrina’s giving you fits already, is she? Somebody should have warned you.”

  “Somebody did—I just didn’t believe him. She’s quick, damn quick. And if you tell her I said that, I’ll flat out deny it. The woman’s already too cocky as it is.”

  Sam laughed, agreeing. “She never has lacked for confidence. Some men have a hard time handling that. I heard you two have a bet going on—”

  Before he could say more, the phone on his desk rang, and with a murmured apology to Blake, he reached over and answered it. Recognizing Sabrina’s husky voice, he started to smile. “Well, speak of the devil. I was just talking about you, Sabrina. What’s up?”

  Snapping to attention at the mention of Sabrina’s name, Blake watched Sam’s expression turn from teasing to grim in the blink of an eye. All business, the detective reached for a pen and started jotting down notes. “No, don’t touch it any more than you already have,” he said quickly. “We’ll need to test it for fingerprints, then send it to the lab to see what they can make of it. I’ll be right over.”

  Impatient, the one-sided conversation giving him few clues to what was going on, Blake started throwing questions at the other man the second he hung up. “Don’t touch what? Is Sabrina in some kind of danger? What are you sending to the lab? Dammit, Sam, what’s going on?”

  For a moment, he thought the other man wasn’t going to tell him anything, but then Sam sighed and said, “I guess there’s no reason to keep it a secret—you’re going to find out soon enough anyway. Sabrina got to work late today—just a few minutes ago, in fact—and found a note someone had left on her desk. It appears to be from Tanya Bishop’s killer.”

  “What?!”

  “Appears is the operative word here,” he stressed. “At this point, we can’t be sure it’s from the real killer, but Sabrina’s not taking it lightly. In fact, she sounded pretty shaken.”

  “Well, I would think she damn well would be. Why would the bastard send her a note?”

  “The man’s a murderer, Blake. He’s already killed once, possibly twice, if he offed Charlene McClintock. Who knows what’s going on in his head? And he didn’t send it. Sabrina thinks he hand-delivered it.”

  “Son of a bitch! You mean he just walked right into the Daily Record?”

  “That’s the way it looks. I’m heading over there right now to check it out. I’ll see you later at the press conference.”

  “The hell you will,” Blake said, rising to his feet. “I’m going with you.”

  Sitting at her desk, her gaze trained unseeingly on her computer monitor, Sabrina tried to focus on her story about the mayor’s son and his drunken joyride, but her concentration was shot. She couldn’t write a logical sentence to save her life. All she could think about was the series of veiled threats in the note, threats that could have been meant for every professional woman in the city. Including herself.

  When the thought had first occurred to her, fear, uncontrollable and unwanted, had surged in her before she could stop it. And she hadn’t liked it one little bit. She didn’t like being afraid, especially where she worked. This was her desk, her paper, and no murdering wacko was going to waltz in there and scare the bejabbers out of her just because he had a problem with women in power positions!

  Giving up any attempt to work, she sat back and glared at the note, a thousand angry questions spinning in her head. Had the writer really killed Tanya? And why had he sent his note to her? Obviously he wanted his message to get out to professional women who were, in his words, “tampering with the world order,” but that didn’t mean that she was the only reporter who could relay his message for him. Any television station or newspaper in the country would have done the same thing once the note was declared valid by the police. So why her? From the way he sounded, he didn’t even like career women, and she’d never claimed to be anything else. What did he want with her, anyway?

  Frowning, she was still trying to figure that out when Sam Kelly walked into the city room. And right behind him was Blake Nickels, strolling in as if he was taking a walk in a park!

  Stunned, Sabrina couldn’t believe her eyes. “What’s he doing here?” she asked Sam by way of a greeting.

  “Now don’t go getting all bent out of shape, Sabrina,” he soothed. “He was at the station when you called, sitting right across from me at my desk. What was I supposed to do? Lock him up so he couldn’t follow me?”

  “It’s a thought,” she
replied, shooting Blake a narrow-eyed look that didn’t faze his teasing grin one iota. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here, cowboy. What do you want?”

  “A story.” Plopping down on a corner of her desk, he tilted his cowboy hat to the back of his head and crossed his arms across his chest as if he planned to stay awhile. “The last I heard, you were it.”

  Despite the fact that she was still unsettled about the note, she couldn’t help but appreciate the vagaries of Fate. Biting back a smile, she asked, “Have you ever heard that old saying ‘what goes around, comes around,’ Nickels? Well, it looks like it’s your turn to get what’s coming to you. Yesterday, you had an exclusive. Today, I do. Isn’t life funny?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s a regular riot,” he drawled.

  Captivated by the flash of her quick grin, he wondered if she had any idea how tempting she looked, her gaze level with his for once since he was sitting, satisfaction dancing in those expressive brown eyes of hers. A man could be forgiven for kissing a woman under such circumstances, and the sudden need to do just that stunned the hell out of him. Where the devil had that come from?

  You’ve been too long without a woman, his common sense muttered in his ear. That’s the only explanation. Sure, she’s a pretty little thing, but she’d just as soon have you for breakfast as look at you. She’s the competition. Remember?

  Brought up short by the reminder—and annoyed at the need for it—he scowled and glanced down at her desk. “So where’s the note? At least let me take a quick peek at it before you toss me out of here.”

  Lightning-quick, she grabbed his hand and tried to tug him to his feet. “Not on your life. You’ve seen and heard all you’re going to, so get. I’m sure Sam has a lot of questions, and I have no intention of answering them in front of you.”