Jack Dakota fit that bill. She’d gotten a good close look into those eyes—granite gray—and knew that he wasn’t one to let a few rules get in his way.
Just what would a man like him do if he knew she was carrying a king’s ransom in her battered leather purse?
Damn it, Bailey. Damn it. M.J. fisted her free hand and tapped it restlessly on her knee. Why did you send me the diamond, and where are the other two?
She cursed herself, as well, for not going directly to Bailey’s door after she came home from closing M.J.’s the night before. But she’d been tired, and she’d figured Bailey was sound asleep. And as her friend was the steadiest, most practical person M.J. knew, she’d simply decided to wait for what she was certain would be a very practical, sensible reason.
Stupid, she told herself now. Why had she assumed Bailey had sent the stone to her simply because she knew M.J. would be home in the middle of the day and around to receive the package? Why had she assumed the rock was a fake, a copy, even though the note that accompanied it asked M.J. to keep it with her at all times?
Because Bailey just wasn’t the kind of woman to ship off a blue diamond worth more than a million with no warnings or explanations. She was a gemologist, dedicated, brilliant, and patient as Job. How else could she continue to work for the creeps who masqueraded as her family?
M.J.’s mouth tightened as she thought of Bailey’s stepbrothers. The Salvini twins had always treated Bailey as though she were an inconvenience, something they were stuck with because their father had left her a percentage of the business in his will. And, blindly loyal to family, Bailey had always found excuses for them.
Now M.J. wondered if they were part of the reason. Had they tried to pull something? She wouldn’t put it past them, no indeed. But it was hard to believe Timothy and Thomas Salvini would be stupid enough to try something fancy with the Three Stars of Mithra.
That was what Bailey had called them, and she’d had a dreamy look in her eyes. Three priceless blue diamonds, in a golden triangle that had once been held in the open hands of a statue of the god Mithra, and now property of the Smithsonian. Salvini, with Bailey’s reputation behind it, was to assess, verify and appraise the stones.
What if the creeps had gotten it into their heads to keep them?
No, it was too wild, M.J. decided. Better to believe this whole mess was some sort of mix-up, a mistaken identity tangle.
Much better to concentrate on how she would repay Jack Dakota for ruining her afternoon off.
“You are a dead man.” She said it calmly, relishing the words.
“Yeah, well, everybody dies sooner or later.” He was heading south on 95, and he was grateful she’d stopped swearing at him long enough to let him think.
“It’s going to be sooner in your case, Jack. Lots sooner.” The traffic was thick, thanks to the Fourth of July holiday weekend, but it was fast.
How humiliating would it be, she wondered, to stick her head out the window and scream for help? Mortifying, she supposed, but she might have tried it if she’d believed it would work. Better if they could just run into one of the inexplicable traffic snags that stopped cars dead for miles.
Where the hell were the road crews and the rubberneckers who loved them when she needed them?
Seeing nothing but clear sailing for miles, she told herself to deal with Jack “The Idiot” Dakota herself. “If you want to live to see another sunrise, pull this excuse for a car over, uncuff me and let me go.”
“Go where?” He flicked his eyes from the road long enough to glance at her. “Back to your apartment?”
“That’s my problem, not yours.”
“Not anymore, sister. I take it personal, real personal, when someone shoots at me. Since you seem to be the reason why, I’ll be keeping you for a while.”
If they hadn’t been doing seventy, she’d have punched him. Instead, she rattled her chain. “Take these damn things off me.”
“Nope.”
A muscle twitched in her jaw. “You’ve stepped in it now, Dakota. We’re in Virginia. Kidnapping, crossing state lines. That’s federal.”
“You came with me,” he pointed out. “Now you’re staying with me until I get this figured out.” The doors rattled ominously as he whipped around an eighteen-wheeler. “And you should be grateful.”
“Oh, I should be grateful. You broke into my apartment, knocked me around, busted up my things and have me cuffed to a door handle.”
“That’s right. If I hadn’t, you’d probably be lying in that apartment right now, with a bullet in your head.”
“They came after you, ace, not me.”
“I don’t think so. My debts are paid, I’m not fooling around with anyone’s wife, and I haven’t pissed anyone off lately. Except for you. Nobody’s got a reason to send muscle after me. You, on the other hand…” He skimmed his gaze over her face again. “Somebody wants you, sugar.”
“Thousands do,” she said, stretched out her long legs as she shifted toward him.
“I’ll bet.” He didn’t give in to the impulse to look at those legs—he just thought about them. “But other than the brainless idiots you’d kick in the heart, you’ve got someone real interested. Interested enough to set me up, and take me out with you. Ralph, you bastard.”
He shoved aside a copy of The Grapes of Wrath and a torn T-shirt and snagged his car phone. Steering one-handed, he punched in numbers then hooked the receiver under his chin.
“Ralph, you bastard,” he repeated when the phone was answered.
“D-D-Dakota? That you? You track d-d-down that skip?”
“When I figure my way clear of this, I’m coming for you.”
“What—what’re you talking about? You find her? Look, it’s a straight trace, Jack. I g-g-gave you a plum. Just a c-c-couple’s hours’ work for full f-f-fee.”
“You’re stuttering more than usual, Ralph. That won’t be a problem after I knock your teeth down your throat. Who wants the woman?”
“Look, I—I—I got problems here. I gotta close early. It’s the holiday weekend. I got p-p-personal problems.”
“There’s no place you can hide. Why the phony paperwork? Why’d you set me up?”
“I got p-p-problems. Big p-p-problems.”
“I’m your big problem right now.” He tapped the brakes, swung around a convertible and hit the fast lane. “If whoever’s pushing your buttons is trying to trace this, I’m in my car, just tooling around.” He thought for a moment, then added, “And I’ve got the woman.”
“Jack, listen to me. L-l-listen. Tell me where you are, dump her and d-d-drive away. J-j-just drive. Stay out of it. I wouldn’ta tagged you for the job, ’cept I knew you could handle yourself. Now I’m telling you, stash her somewhere, give me the l-l-location and drive away. Far away. You don’t want this.”
“Who wants her, Ralph?”
“You don’t n-n-need to know. You d-d-don’t want to know. Just d-d-do it. I’ll throw in five large. A b-b-bonus.”
“Five large?” Jack’s brows lifted. When Ralph parted with an extra nickel, it was big. “Make it ten and tell me who wants her, and we may deal.”
It pleased him that M.J. protested that with a flurry of curses and threats. It added substance to the bluff.
“T-t-ten!” Ralph squeaked it, stuttered for a full ten seconds. “Okay, okay, ten grand, but no names, and b-b-believe