“Looking good is an investment.” She unfolded the iridescent bronze-tinted silk stockings with the retro seams up the back and stroked them with an admiring hand. “You did say whatever we needed, didn’t you?” She slanted him a look of mock dismay. “Does it exceed your budget? Oh, no! I’ll write you a check! Oh, dear…whoops, afraid I can’t after all. I’m a murder suspect now, you see. My assets will be frozen any time now, if they aren’t already. So sorry!”
He made a disgusted sound and she left him to stew, gathering up stockings, shoes, jewelry case, and the dress before she went into the bathroom to pour herself into her outfit.
The stockings and garter belt were delicious, and the dress nicer even than it had looked in the online catalog. Crumpled, stretchy bronze fabric clung lovingly to every curve and hollow. It was almost off the shoulders with built-in support for her bosom that she barely needed. The skirt came down half the length of her thigh. Boldly short for a woman who scorned panties, but she liked living dangerously.
To a point, she mused, thinking of the morning’s events. To a point. She was backing way off on living dangerously.
She braided her hair up into a high, tight coronet and fastened it with a bristling array of Deadly Beauty ornaments, all of them fully armed just in case. Her pendant topaz earrings looked great with the dress, also serving in a pinch as a hypodermic loaded with a quick-acting knock-out drug. She pulled out the necklace, the pièce de resistance.
Her eyes looked back from the mirror, bleak and miserable. She had to be ruthless now. Quick, decisive. To act without hesitation.
She had to stop dawdling and procrastinating, goddamnit.
“Rachel, honey?” she called. “Come on in here. We’ve got to do one last potty stop for you.”
Rachel peered around the bathroom door, resplendent in her new red velvet dress trimmed with black ruffles. The flamenco three-year-old.
“No pee,” she said darkly.
Tam shoved the new Tigger potty seat on to the toilet, tugged down Rachel’s tights and swung the little girl up onto the toilet. “You just concentrate,” she said. “I want to hear that tinkling sound, OK?”
With Rachel cooperating, Tam took a deep breath, stuck out her tits, and sauntered out.
Janos glanced up. The receipt dropped to his lap, forgotten.
She struck a pose, and let him look. She turned, very slowly, showing off. “Do you like it?” she asked throatily.
Janos cleared his throat. “Sì,” he said. “You are magnificent.”
He stood up, and she walked toward him, standing close enough so that he could smell all the outrageously expensive perfumed body and face creams she had bought on his dime.
“Thank you for the dress,” she said softly. “I love it.”
“The investment was worth it,” he conceded.
She dropped her lashes demurely. “How sweet. Such a generous thing to say.” She held up the clasps of the heavy beaten gold necklace with the big, padlock-shaped, moonstone-studded pendant. “Clasp this for me?”
He took them in his fingertips and bent over her head, inhaling her scent. He leaned closer still, until she could feel the brush of his warm breath. He smelled good. His breath smelled good, too. He was so hot, still faintly smelling of patchouli oil, sweat, and man.
She clenched her teeth. Grabbed the pendant in one hand, slid her fingers down to the third bead of the necklace with the other. She found the textured cluster of moonstones, pressed the pendant against his bare shoulder—and pushed the button.
Janos arched and shuddered with a strangled groan for the entire duration of the nerve-scrambling electric zap that she gave him. It was a long one, not out of spite, but because she badly needed an extra margin to get Rachel and all their stuff into a cab and away before he was capable of pursuing them.
He toppled backward onto the bed. It made an enormous rattling crash as his big body hit. Rachel appeared in the corridor seconds later, her tights wound like soft shackles around her wobbly ankles.
Her face was woefully confused. “Val sick?” she asked anxiously. “Need medicine?”
So he was Val to Rachel already, was he? She gritted her teeth, stuffing the taser necklace back into her jewelry case. “Just taking a nap, honey.”
Val groaned and tried to speak. Shit. Her margin of safety was slim. The bastard was a tough one. Tam cursed, and hastened to tug up Rachel’s panties and tights and get her into her brand-new red winter ski jacket, also bought on Janos’s dime. A flurry of gathering shopping bags and scattered toys, babbling incoherent explanations to Rachel, and finally they were out of there. Tam held the wriggling Rachel with one arm and shoved the new stroller, which was heavily laden with bag, purse, potty seat and a cluster of shopping bags, with the other arm.
It started up when they were finally in the cab. Fat, hot tears, sliding right down through her undereye coverup, the cosmetic she could least afford to do without. Goddamn him for making her feel guilty. She dabbed, sniffed, cursed. Tried again to justify herself.
She couldn’t give him what he wanted. She could not trust him for a split second. If what he said was true, he had his nuts in a vise, which made him deadly dangerous.
And if he was lying, he was more dangerous still.
She could not expose her friends to him and his organization while they were drinking and partying and dancing, their babies toddling around their feet. She couldn’t let him see who she left her child with. He couldn’t expect her to. He would not have done so in her place. No one with a functioning brain would. He’d be stupid to take it personally. And Val Janos was anything but stupid.
Still, those tears kept sliding down, one after the other, bringing a gooey landslide of foundation and mascara along with them.
Chapter
11
The satellite phone in Val’s pocket vibrated. He counted the rings, twenty of them, but lay there, inert. Unable to coordinate his muscles. All he could do was twitch and fume and wait, furious with himself for letting her drop him. And with such humiliating ease, too. All it took was the short skirt, the long legs, the gleaming lips, the erect nipples.
He struggled until he managed to get his weak, trembling limbs to obey him, and hoisted himself up into a sitting position. He sat on the edge of the bed, hunched over. The phone rang again.
It took seven rings just to get his slack hand into his pocket and pull the thing out. The display informed him that it was Henry.
He answered promptly. “Sì? What have you got?”
Henry didn’t answer for a few moments. “Uh, Val? Is that you?”
“Who else would answer this phone?” he snarled.
“Your voice sounds strange.” Henry sounded suspicious. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you drunk?”
“She tased me,” he grimly admitted, “and ran.”
“Oh.”
Henry said nothing, but Val could see his friend in his mind’s eye, trying not to grin. The image did nothing to help his mood.
“So, ah, you lost her then, I take it?” Henry asked.
“No. I put an RF transmitter into her diaper bag,” he said. “They are going to a wedding now. I will follow them there. As soon as I can walk.”
“Want me to monitor it for you?” Henry’s voice was a little too solicitious. “I’ve got nothing happening this evening, and this chick sounds like a real live wire…so