Bait (32 page)

She took a deep breath.

“So, Susan Allen is on her way to St. Louis with Zelda,” Maddie said carefully, striving for calm in the face of crisis.
“Now?”

Jon nodded. “She said they would be leaving for the airport right after she and I finished speaking.”

“She surely won't be able to get a flight at such short notice.” Maddie was thinking furiously, seeking any loop-hole to the looming disaster that she could find. “Especially with a dog.”

“We're not talking commercial airlines here. You forget, we're playing in a whole new league with them. They're flying in in Mrs. Brehmer's private plane. Susan said they'd be landing in St. Louis about ten tonight. She wanted to know if we could have someone meet them at the airport. Of course I said yes.” Jon straightened and tugged compulsively on his tie, which subsequently hung crooked on the left instead of on the right. “What else could I have said?”

“Nothing else. You did the right thing.” Maddie moved around behind her chair and gripped its padded back hard. “We knew going in that this wasn't going to be totally smooth sailing. Mrs. Brehmer has a reputation for being difficult, and this is probably just the first manifestation of it. But we can handle it. We
will
handle it. You say Susan's bringing Zelda? Fine. Let's do the easiest thing first. We'll set up a shoot for some photos we can use for their new logo. Zelda in cute outfits, that kind of thing. You go try to line up a photographer, and I'll start contacting stylists.” She rolled her eyes. “Do they even have dog stylists? Who the heck knows?”

“Maybe you want a groomer,” Louise suggested. “Dogs have groomers. My JoJo goes to the groomer when his hair gets in a tangle.”

Maddie remembered Mrs. Brehmer complaining about Zelda's groomer. And JoJo was Louise's elderly shih tzu, so Louise, as a dog owner, would presumably know about such things.

“Okay, groomer,” she said. “And costumes. We need doggie costumes. Where do people get those, anyway?”

“If you want, I could start calling costume rental shops,” Louise offered. “And I can get you the number of JoJo's groomer.”

“Good thought,” Maddie said. Pulling the chair out again, she sat down and reached for the phone. “Okay, people, we've got a plan. Let's get it done.”

Louise nodded and bustled off.

“I'll meet them at the airport at ten.” Jon, looking heartened, smoothed his tie until it hung almost straight again. “I'll call Susan back and let her know.”

“Tell her that we can't wait to get started,” Maddie instructed with her hand on the phone. “And I'll go with you to the airport.”

Nodding, Jon started toward the door, stopped abruptly, and turned back to frown at her.

“Uh, Maddie—what about them?” He looked significantly at the three FBI agents, who had been listening to this exchange with varying degrees of bemusement on their faces.

Maddie looked at them, too. Wynne looked stoic. Cynthia made a face and waggled her fingers at them.

“They'll just have to come with us,” she said, her eyes meeting McCabe's to see if this worked for him.

“Whither thou goest ...” McCabe said with the smallest of smiles.

“Maybe we shouldn't tell Susan they're FBI agents,” Jon suggested. “Knowing that they're following you around because they think some wacko wants to kill you is probably not going to give her a real good feeling about being associated with Creative Partners.”

“Good point,” Maddie said, and looked at McCabe again.

“You won't even see us,” McCabe promised. “Unless you need us, that is.”

“Great.” Refusing to allow the chilling implications of that to even enter her mind, Maddie rolled her eyes. “Is this turning into a three-ring circus or what?”

“It's the Brehmer account,” Jon, who was already on his way out the door again, reminded her over his shoulder. “Think ten million dollars a year in advertising.”

“There's that,” Maddie said, and sat down at her desk again. For an account that size, she could jump through a few hoops.

 

BY NINE-TWENTY, everything was in place. Limp with exhaustion, Maddie leaned back in her chair and let her hands dangle toward the floor. Cynthia and Wynne had gone, although Wynne was expected to return at any minute. McCabe was sitting in one of the two black-leather-and-chrome chairs in front of her desk. Having walked into her office just minutes before, Jon perched on the edge of her desk, outlining the arrangements he'd made. Louise, who'd followed Jon in, sat in the other leather-and-chrome chair, taking notes. As Jon continued, McCabe rose and crossed to the windows, which took up the whole of the north wall. Maddie's eyes followed him even as she listened to Jon. McCabe had shed his jacket several hours before. For a long time afterward, every time she'd looked at him all she'd been able to see was the very businesslike gun in the shoulder holster slung across the left side of his chest. Now, with his back turned to her, her gaze instinctively shifted lower: His gray slacks hugged a trim waist and an athlete's high, tight butt. Maddie admired both, then let her gaze slide up to watch as he lifted an arm to pull the chain at one side of the windows that closed the vertical blinds. The white dress shirt he was wearing tightened across his broad shoulders.
Sexy,
she thought, then, annoyed at herself, immediately sought a distraction. She glanced past him, out the window, as the blinds slid shut, and saw that it was darker outside than it should have been. Nine-twenty on an August evening in St. Louis was usually a gorgeous, golden time, with long shadows falling across the ground and the sun just beginning to sink beneath the horizon in a burst of oranges and purples. But heavy gray clouds had rolled in during the past few hours to cover the sky, so that now it looked almost like full night outside. It occurred to Maddie then that McCabe had pulled the blinds to keep anyone who might be in a position to do so—from an office inside the skyscraper across the street, say, or on the roof of the smaller building next door to the skyscraper—from seeing in, or worse. In the crush of setting things up for the morrow, she'd almost forgotten the reason McCabe was lounging in her office in the first place. But now, as he turned away from the window and her eyes met his, she remembered, and gave an involuntary little shiver. They were on the sixth floor, true, and the chances that a bullet would come crashing through the window seemed remote. But she didn't think she would ever get over the trauma of knowing that it was possible.

“So it's all set,” Jon concluded. Maddie's gaze switched from McCabe back to him, and she nodded. Jon was looking a little less pumped up than when he had entered her office five minutes before, she noticed as she met his gaze, and there was a faint tightness around his mouth and eyes that was new. But his tie was once again firmly in place, his collar was buttoned, and he looked altogether more calm and collected than he had when the news had hit that Susan Allen and Zelda were on their way. In other words, he looked spiffy as usual, which, she concluded, was a sign that all was once again right in his world.

“You done good,” she said, smiling at him. Glancing over at Louise, she included her in the smile. “
We
done good.” She pushed back from the desk and stood up. “Now, let's go kick some difficult client butt.”

Jon slid off the corner of her desk. “You want to ride with me to the airport?”

Maddie's eyes slipped to McCabe, who was still standing over by the windows but was facing her now. He shook his head slightly at her.

She looked back at Jon. “Uh—I think I'll go in my own car, thanks.”

“Fine,” Jon said, a little shortly. “I'll just go get my jacket.”

Was it her imagination, or did his mouth look noticeably thinner as he left the room? Before Maddie had time to decide, Louise spoke up.

“Do you want me to come to the airport, too, Maddie?”

“No thanks, Louise. You can go on home. I appreciate you staying so late.”

“Oh, I'm glad to. I'm just so pleased things are going so well for us.” Louise beamed at her. “Whoever would have thought where we'd be right now, when you took over from Mr. Owens? It's just a dream come true for all of us.” Her smile faltered, and she glanced a little uncertainly at McCabe, then looked back at Maddie again. “You sure you don't need me? I'd be glad to come along with you. I could even come over and spend the night if you want me to. Or you could spend the night at my house.”

Her meaning was clear: in case Maddie was afraid. And Maddie was pretty sure that Louise was including McCabe in her mental list of things that Maddie might reasonably fear.

Maddie shook her head. “I'll be fine. Don't worry about me, my babysitter is actually very efficient. See you in the morning.”

“Well, if you're sure.”

With another doubtful glance at McCabe, who gave her a small ironic smile, Louise left the room.

“Do you have to look quite so menacing?” Maddie asked McCabe as she came around her desk to head for the door. “You're scaring Louise.”

“Actually, I thought I was projecting hungry and tired more than menacing.” He snagged his jacket from the back of the chair he'd been sitting in, shrugged it on, and said something into the two-way radio he extracted from his pocket as he followed her into the hall. She turned off the light to her office as she went. “If I'd known you were meaning to put in another half-day's work when I got here at five, I would have grabbed something to eat on the way in.”

“I'm hungry, too,” Maddie admitted, opening the door to the hall closet where everyone's coats were kept and extracting her jacket. “There's salad in the refrigerator at home.”

It struck her that it felt good to say “at home” to him, and know that he would be sharing the apartment—and the contents of her refrigerator—with her. She had never realized it before, but maybe, just maybe, she'd been living alone too long. Maybe she'd been lonely.

If so, she reminded herself grimly, McCabe was certainly not the remedy of choice.

“Yippee.” McCabe sounded less than enthused. “Forget salad. What I need is a steak.”

“Sorry, fresh out.”

Louise was walking through the suite, turning off lights, and now only Jon's office and the reception room were lit. Maddie started to put on her jacket.

“Hang on a minute.” McCabe came up behind her and reached past her into the closet. “Aren't you forgetting something?”

He pulled out the bulletproof vest, dangling it in front of her. Maddie looked at it, looked at him, and sighed.

“This is a giant pain in my posterior, you know.”

He smiled. “Better than a giant pain elsewhere.”

“True.” He took her jacket from her, and she slipped the vest on. When she had trouble getting the zipper engaged, he watched for a couple tries, made an impatient sound under his breath, brushed her hands aside, and said, “Here, let me.”

He engaged the clasp with just a little difficulty, then zipped her up with brisk efficiency. Meanwhile, Maddie found herself studying the flicker of his eyelashes against his bronze cheeks as he looked down to watch his hands at work; the slight twist to his mouth as he struggled to get the clasp into position; and the five o'clock shadow that was back in all its glory, darkening the hard angles of his jaw. When he had the ends of the zipper together at last and glanced up to meet her gaze as he pulled it up, she realized that her heart was beating way faster than it should have been, and her breathing was just a little erratic. He must have seen something of what was going on with her in her eyes, because for a moment after the zipper was fastened, he kept hold of the tab and held her gaze without moving or saying anything at all. The memory of that sizzling kiss suddenly seemed to scorch the air between them.

“Ready?” Jon asked, emerging from his office. He paused in the doorway, one hand reaching behind him to grope for his light switch, and frowned at them. His gaze flickered from Maddie's face to McCabe. From where Jon stood, of course, all he could see of the other man was his back. Only Maddie could see the heat in McCabe's eyes.

McCabe let go of the zipper tab and stepped back. For a moment longer, their eyes held. His had darkened, she thought. In the uncertain light, they looked almost black.

“All set,” Maddie said. Refusing to feel flustered, or at least to show it if she did, she took her jacket from McCabe with an assumption of nonchalance and slipped it on. As she moved past McCabe toward where Jon, having switched off his light, now stood in the semidarkness, waiting for her, she buttoned it up over the vest. A little bit still showed at the top, but that couldn't be helped. She only hoped that Susan Allen would simply think she was into layering.

“Wynne's secured the elevator,” McCabe said behind her. “Gomez and Hendricks are waiting down in the parking lot. They've just finished checking out your car. We're good to go.”

 

“SO, WHAT'S up with you and that guy?” Jon asked Maddie as they waited side by side in the small terminal at the St. Louis airport that serviced private planes. The waiting area was relatively plush, all beige walls and blond wood and brown-leather chairs, with a slick stone floor underfoot. It operated under different security rules than the much larger commercial facility next door, and Maddie and Jon were standing in front of the wall of huge windows, black now except for the halogen glow that lit the wet tarmac outside that looked out over the area where the small planes taxied in. Maddie had already eyed those windows askance, but the chance that a shooter could somehow get out there in the runway area seemed pretty small, and anyway, McCabe didn't seem concerned, so Maddie had made up her mind not to be. The Brehmer's Pet Food plane was already on the ground, a brown-uniformed attendant had just informed them, and they had just risen to their feet and stepped forward in anticipation of greeting Susan Allen as soon as she walked off the plane. Maddie, having swallowed the last of her Diet Coke, was in the process of setting the can down as Jon spoke. Jon, who'd been chomping on peanut M&M's, twisted the small yellow bag closed at the top and stuck it in his jacket pocket.