Trust With Your Life

For the first time, Molly considered screaming, despite the folly of it amid these thick-walled, high-windowed units that were touted for their soundproof qualities. But she knew it would get her killed, as well as possibly some of her neighbors. The man released her and she walked toward the door, prompting the lizards who lived in the bushes to do their usual rustling through the ivy. The noise made the man next to her tense, but it was a comfort to Molly.

Molly’s neighbor above, Jerry, was never home during the week. She considered going up to the wrong door in the hopes of alerting someone but discarded that notion as the man’s gun pressed into her back. Though she wasn’t crazy about most of her neighbors, she didn’t dislike anyone enough to risk getting them killed.

Molly turned the key in the dead bolt, then in the lock, and suddenly she and the man were inside. He rested for a moment while his eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Neither of them made a move to turn on the light, but enough of it poured in from the twelve-foot wall of windows on the opposite side of the living room for him to see the layout.

Molly stared at her comfy chairs, the shawls to drape over legs in cool evenings, the pillows her friends had made, and felt none of the joy she usually did. Her big splurge items since she’d bought the town house were pictures. She loved art, and the walls held a few lovely paintings. The man didn’t seem too interested in any of it, though.

“So where’s the tea?”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on and what you want with me?”

“I need something to drink, that’s why,” he replied. He gestured with the gun. “Why don’t you pour?”

Molly moved to the left, and he followed through the archway into her kitchen. Large by the area’s standards, it held cupboards floor to ceiling, a center work island with a stove, and a pass-through to the dining room on the opposite side of the wall.

She was more scared than she ever imagined a person could be. She had no idea what was going to happen next, and the suspense was making her dizzy with fear.

“What kind of tea?” she whispered in a ragged voice.

“Kind?” he asked.

“I have Lipton, decaf orange spice and Earl Grey.” Her hand rested on the canister and her eyes met his. She saw then how dry his lips were; the bottom one was cracked and bleeding at the corner. He was still pointing the gun at her, but for the first time she felt her terror recede a degree.

He didn’t seem the type to shoot a woman at close range, or at any range, really. He looked exhausted, frightened and, unless Molly was completely wrong, in pain.

“Lipton will be fine, doll. Two sugars and milk.”

Molly snapped on the flame under the teakettle. “I don’t have milk.” She did have, but she didn’t feel hospitable.

Disappointment flashed across his face, and she thought how stupid this scene was. Here she was with a stranger, acting like some domestic couple, discussing what was needed at the grocer’s. Just then he groaned and rested his hands on the tiled counter of the cooking island.

Molly stood two feet away from him and for the first time noticed how badly bruised he was. He seemed to have some kind of bandages on his neck, below his collar.

She moved around the counter toward her front door but stopped when his head snapped up. The stare he gave her now was one of a man clearly in pain, and his knuckles were white around the grip of the gun. “Stand still, damn you. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Carefully she put her hands into her skirt pockets, hoping the bolt of fear that rammed through her arm muscles didn’t show when her fingers made contact with the gun secreted there. “I’m not going anywhere. What’s wrong with you? Have you been shot?”

“Don’t concern yourself with me, doll. I’m fine.”

She nodded at the keys lying on the counter. “Why don’t you just take my car and go? Lock me in a closet or something.”

“I can’t go anywhere yet. I need you to help me get this thing off.” He held up his arm with the handcuffs dangling.

“That’s why you kidnapped me?”

The man’s eyes went blank and suddenly he raised the gun and pointed it directly at her throat. “No. That’s not why. I know you, from before. Why don’t you talk for a minute? Tell me how you know Fred Brooker. Did he send you to get me tonight?”

“What are you talking about?” she replied, taking a step backward. “I told you the night we met that I work for the phone company. I was in his office on business. I never even met the man. So why would he send me to get you?” Molly stopped talking and leaned against the counter. “And how would he know you were going to be in a wreck tonight?”

The man didn’t seem to be listening to her. He was gazing off over her shoulder. It gave her the creeps, and a fresh wave of anxiety that he might be on drugs crashed over her. “Look, you can’t stay here. I’ve got to go to work this morning. I’ve got a big job to supervise in San Clemente. If I don’t show up, my crew will be here looking for me. So will my boss.”

The man caressed the trigger with the pad of his thumb. “Supervise?”

“Like I just told you, I’m with the phone company. I’m a manager. We’re putting in a new system at the administrative offices of Green Grocery Stores today, and I’m in charge.” Molly blinked, trying desperately to remember if he’d locked the door behind her. She decided he hadn’t. “So have your tea and I’ll take a shot at the handcuff, but then I want you to leave.”

He flinched when she said the word “shot.” He lowered the gun a few inches.

“I know you must be scared, Molly,” he replied in what in other circumstances would be an apologetic tone. The stranger’s glance rested for a moment on Molly’s face. “I’m sorry I’m frightening you. It seems, however, that it can’t be helped.”

The teakettle began to wail.

When the man turned his eyes toward the noise, Molly pulled the gun from her pocket as if she had practiced the move for years. “Throw that gun down and move over against the wall.”

The man’s face registered no surprise, which scared Molly worse than if he’d cursed at her. “Well, now, that changes things, doesn’t it, doll?” He placed the gun on the counter, then reached both hands behind his head, grimacing slightly when his fingers touched his neck.

Molly’s hands were sweating and her arm ached from the weight of the gun, or from the tenseness of her grasp. The kettle’s screams were full volume now, and the hot steam escaping from its mouth began to fill the cool room like fog.

Her plan was to direct him to her bedroom, which could be locked from either side of the door. After she locked him in, she could call the police. Which meant she had to get him to walk about thirty feet out of the kitchen, across the foyer and down the hall. “I want you to walk out of the kitchen and turn left.”

His eyes flickered toward the dark hallway. “To your bedroom, Molly? I’d go there at your invite even without the gun.”

“Very funny. Just walk.” Her voice was too loud and she glared at the still-wailing kettle.

He made no move.

Nausea churned her stomach, and her skin began to turn clammy from all the steam. Could I just shoot him? Molly asked herself. She was too nervous to look down at the gun to see if it had anything like a safety on it. A knot of pain was throbbing in her shoulder blade.

“Start walking, you creep, or I’ll hurt you.” The insulting word zapped out of her mouth, surprising Molly and the man both. He made a noise deep in his throat, and a dangerous glint came into his eyes.

All at once he lunged, hurling the red-hot teakettle off the stove directly at Molly, a shout of pure animal anger erupting from his throat. She banged her body against the cabinet to duck the kettle, then turned and ran for the front door. He tackled her and grabbed the gun before she got three feet.

They rolled on the floor while Molly clawed and screamed, kicked and cussed at him, remembering most of her self-defense moves but executing none of them with any effectiveness.

Even injured, his six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame found no match in a woman almost a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter. They smashed into the foyer table and onto the floor, where Molly felt his body all over her. His hands were so quick she couldn’t get a blow in. She kept yelling, though, and he moved a knee over her arm and covered her mouth with his hand.

“Shut up, damn you. Shut up!”

Molly looked him right in the eye, then used every ounce of strength to bite his hand. He didn’t yell, but he did slap her head back against the floor, sending her sliding into a fuzzy pit of pain and unconsciousness.

Chapter Three

Alec Steele stood in Molly Jakes’s kitchen berating himself for allowing a bad situation to get so much further out of hand. He never should have abducted her; he should have walked off the freeway and found another car.

But seeing her had given him such a start. He couldn’t believe it was the same attractive woman he had last seen on the night he had stood on Fred Brooker’s boat and watched as the businessman shot and killed another human being.

Alec had thought of her several times in the months between that night and this, especially when he was alone on his boat, the Strewth, in the blue-green waters off Australia’s coast. He had even planned to look her up when he was in the area, having kept the business card she had snapped down so primly on Fred Brooker’s desk.

Could it be a coincidence that she was here? In a city of millions, what the hell had she been doing leaning beside the corpse of a man who had tried to kill him?

With a shiver, Alec threw down four aspirin tablets and took a long swallow of water. The single handcuff pinged against the glass and he frowned. It was time to check and make sure Molly Jakes was recovering from that bonk on the head he had given her.

As well as to find out if she was as innocent as those warm brown eyes made her seem.

* * *

MOLLY CAME TO SLOWLY, wanting to believe what she was remembering had not really happened. But, judging from the throbbing in her head, it had.

She was lying on her bed, the afghan, knitted by her best friend’s mother, tossed over her bare legs. She was still wearing her stained T-shirt and skirt, but the Aussie had washed her hands and arms.

The thought of some man washing her down while she was out cold sent a wave of anger and embarrassment spilling down her body, an emotion quickly replaced by the terror of the situation. Molly struggled to sit up, which was a bad move, for immediately her stomach contracted and her head felt as if it had been used as a strike ball in a bowling alley.

She wiggled up against the headboard, sank back onto the thick pillows and stared at the door. It was closed, and she guessed, locked, as well. She was now a victim of her own nesting instincts, which had her install old-fashioned locks with keys sporting lovely silk tassels. Trouble was, they could lock a person in as easily as out.

This imprisonment in her own home made her angry enough to attempt to sit up again. She remembered in time to avoid the pain and made herself lie quietly and smolder. Her gaze roamed the room for help or protection. The Aussie had unplugged and removed the phone. Her windows did not open, except for the louvered ones eight feet up the glass.

The town house faced a hill and was alone in the last unit save for her upstairs neighbor, who drove a long-distance rig and was never home on Thursday. Of course, today was Thursday.

Molly swore when she was really frustrated. She knew it was immature, but the vulgar phrases passing her lips relieved some of her anxiety. Only for a moment, however. Fear returned like a growling bear at the sound of the doorknob turning. The tiny hairs on her arms rose above the goose bumps, and she drew her legs up defensively.

She was scanning the room again, trying to focus on something she could use for a weapon, when in walked the person about whom all the curses had been uttered. The stranger looked as bad as Molly felt. For the first time, she noticed that his clothing was also soiled, probably from the deep scrape down the side of his right arm.

It was after six. Sunlight streamed through the white linen drapes. The intruder squinted at Molly and walked toward the bed, halting about two feet away.

She wanted to spit at him but settled for yelling, “You son of a bitch. Do all the men from down under beat women, or just scum like you?”

“Well, glad to see your sweet personality wasn’t altered by our little ruckus.” He took a step closer and Molly flinched, which stopped him in his tracks.

“Ruckus?” she sputtered. “Let’s use the right word here, mate. In the States, we call it kidnapping, assault and battery, attempted murder.”

“Now hold on. I never meant to hurt you. I was just trying to get my hand away from your damn teeth.”

He held up his hand, showing how he had bandaged himself with some adhesive tape and gauze. He’d made a real mess of it; the tape was all lumpy where it had stuck to itself before he’d got it stuck to him.

“I bit you in self-defense.”

He made a grunting sound. “I’m sorry you got hurt, Molly. I really never meant to do that.” He ventured a step closer and stared intently into her face, not to see into her thoughts, she realized, only her eyes.

“Your pupils are the same size. I’d say you don’t have a concussion.”

“Are you a doctor?” Molly demanded.

“No,” he countered. “Are you?”

“No. For the tenth or so time, I work for the phone company. Remember my boys with hard hats?”

“Hard heads, as well, if they’re having to work for you, Molly Jakes.” The intruder flushed under his tan as his voice roughened. “If you don’t mind me saying, you’re out of your mind, acting like some damn female John Wayne. Don’t you American women have any sense at all? Don’t you know enough not to attack a man twice as big as you? If I were a criminal, I could have killed you when you pulled that gunslinger stunt of yours.”

Molly glared. “Who the devil do you think you are, lecturing me like my dad used to? And what is all this John Wayne stuff? Don’t you get any current movies in Australia?”

“I think you’re being hysterical, Molly.”

“And what are you talking about, saying if you were a bad guy? If you’re not a bad guy, what do you call what you’ve done to me the past few hours? If you’re not a bad guy, call the police and get them out here, and we can all listen to your explanation together.”

He rose abruptly, walked over to the bedroom window and peered through the curtains. Molly felt her fear flare up again as she realized just how big he was. The man rubbed at his ribs, which obviously pained him, then turned as he ran his long fingers through his hair. “My name is Alec Steele. I’m surprised you don’t know that.”

“Why would I know your name?”

“For the same reason I know yours. For the same reason I can’t call the police. And I can’t let you call them.”

The single handcuff still dangled from his wrist, making the incongruously comforting sound of a dog’s license clanking against a choke collar. His name seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place where she’d heard it before. “Why not?”

“Because I can’t trust the bastards, that’s why not.”

“Why not?”

Molly’s redundant question hung between them while he got a very odd look on his face. “They may be trying to kill me.”

For several seconds, Molly examined this statement, wondering if she was correct in detecting honesty in this very macho man’s voice. She was a woman who genuinely liked men but wouldn’t claim to know a whole lot about them.

One thing she did know, after working with them for twelve years, was that they didn’t like people to know they were scared. Which meant this guy must have been frightened big-time to admit such a thing to a female.

“Does this have something to do with your being at Frederick Brooker’s office the night he was supposed to have murdered someone?” Molly remembered that she’d told the police about their meeting. During her interviews with them, the cops had acted as if the man was of no interest to them at all. One of them probably mentioned his name to her, she decided.

“You’re a material witness at the trial, aren’t you?” she demanded.

“Yes.”

“What was all that stuff last night? The wreck and all. Does it have something to do with the trial?”

Alec Steele stared at her for several seconds. “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“Because I don’t understand how we both came to be at the same place at the same time when you live in Australia and I live here.”

“I don’t understand that, either, Molly. I was hoping maybe you could explain it.”

“Me?”

“What were you doing out at three a.m.?”

“My job. What were you doing?”

Alec felt confused, then angry. He had half a mind to tell her the truth. That he had been abducted. Drugged. That he had been sitting with two thugs in a car on the freeway when their car was rammed from behind and all hell broke loose.

But he couldn’t tell her any of that. If she was involved with the people who had abducted him, he could be playing into their hands. He stared hard at the fresh-faced beauty in front of him. She couldn’t be involved with the guys who had grabbed him. But she must have been targeted, or why else would she have been there?

The questions in his mind made him angry because he knew he couldn’t answer them now. Angrily he shook his finger at Molly. “Tell me what you’re going to testify about.”

Molly opened her mouth, then closed it. She had no intention of doing anything like that, she decided. While she was no longer afraid Alec Steele was going to kill her, he did have a gun in his waistband, and he seemed to have no intention of leaving. And while she thought he was gorgeous, she had no intention of spending any more time than she had to in discussing whatever it was that was bugging him.

She had to get to the authorities. She had to get help.

And to do that, she had to get rid of him. “First I need to go to the bathroom,” Molly announced as a plan began to take shape in her mind.

Alec blinked as he thought it over, then finally nodded his head in agreement. “Sure.” He walked to the door and opened it, let her walk past but followed close behind.

She stopped at the bathroom door. “Where are you going?”

“With you.”

“Thanks. I think I can manage.”

His glance swept over her bathroom and came to rest on the high windows above the sink. He looked back at her intently as if he was measuring something, then backed out of the room and closed the door with a resounding snap. Molly knew he was standing in the hallway, which really ticked her off. She turned on the water in the sink and left it running while she took care of things.

Her head didn’t hurt all that bad now that she was up, and it felt good to brush her teeth. She also went after her hair, glad for once that the thick brown mane was straight. Since she had found someone to cut it decently, it hung well, framing her round face and looking shiny and healthy, though her skin showed the results of a sleepless night of shock and fright.

She scrubbed her face and rubbed in a dollop of moisturizer, then stripped off her soiled clothes. Even without clean underwear, Molly felt human again as she wiggled into the one-piece terry jumper she wore around the house in the summer.

Just as she zipped it over her chest, Alec rapped his knuckles against the door. “You okay in there, love?”

“Love, doll, chit. Don’t you ever stop with the cutesy labels? You would never be able to hold a job with an equal opportunity employer in this country.”

“Have me working for a woman?” he challenged through the wooden door. “No thanks. Come out if you’re done. We need to get a few things settled.”

Yeah, sure, she answered silently. “I’ll be out in a minute. Why don’t you make us some tea?”

This false, friendly chattiness was a calculated gamble on her part. While the guy was obviously a danger to her, she couldn’t believe he wanted to kill her, which allowed her some options. She was eager to get to a phone, though she knew she would have no chance of that with him in the same room.

Since Alec Steele had made no protest in response to her cheeky suggestion, she reached down and flicked the lock closed. Still no reaction. That meant he’d headed for the kitchen. She turned on the shower, then scrambled up onto the counter and cranked the window completely open. It was plenty big enough, she decided quickly.

Molly had not yet installed new screens, so she didn’t have to worry about pushing them out and having them crash into the thick ivy. She hoisted herself up, wondering if the ivy was thick enough to save her own body.

The outside of her town house offered a sheer drop twelve feet to the pavement. Her neighbor Jerry’s front porch was directly above the window and Molly hoped she could sit on the window ledge and pull herself up enough to get a leg over his railing. Her nerves were buzzing when she stuck her head out the window and looked around.

None of the other neighbors was out yet. She considered screaming but decided they would have a much better chance of hearing her out in the open than from inside. Just then, the bone-jarring noise of jackhammers exploded in the late-summer air.

Great, Molly thought. Just peachy. They’re finally patching the potholes from last winter’s mud slide. With all the racket, she was definitely on her own.

Her fanny stung from the sharp lip of the window, and Jerry’s rail was farther away than she thought. She didn’t have much room to maneuver so she swung one leg over the windowsill and tried to reach sideways for the rain gutter.

Her fingers slipped just as the pounding on the door started. She couldn’t hear what Alec Steele was saying over the drone of the shower and the work crew, so she yelled back, “I’ll be out in a second. Make some eggs.”

Something about her voice must have alerted him. Maybe he could tell she was way up off the ground, she realized, because he tried the door. Molly heard him rattle it, then hit it a couple of times with his fist when he realized it was locked.

The sound of his fury made her rush. Using all her strength, Molly pulled herself completely out of the window, balancing her toes on the ledge. Because the windowpane opened in, she had nothing but the frame to hold on to as she tried to stand, though she found she could reach the railing now, with about six inches to spare.

Gritting her teeth, she forced her right hand to release the window and made a grab for the metal slat of Jerry’s rail with both hands. With much effort, she started pulling her body up the side of the building.

The stucco against her skin hurt like the dickens, pricking the soles of Molly’s feet. She was breathing through her mouth, concentrating on pulling her rear end up even with her shoulders when she slipped. Her knees skidded and banged against the rail and she slid down, though she somehow managed to hold on despite now sweating hands.

She knew she didn’t have much more time. Her shoulder blades and every muscle in her back screamed for relief, but after five or six seconds, she managed to grab the rail with her left foot and hoist herself up.

It was exhilarating, but only for a moment. The front door opened below her and she flattened her body against the wall. Alec Steele was most likely searching the ivy, figuring Molly had dropped down and been killed, considering his unspoken but guessably low opinion of women’s physical abilities.

But the man was no fool. She knew it wouldn’t be long before he checked upstairs. Molly had a feeling he wouldn’t be nearly as calm as he’d been a minute ago. She grabbed the knob on Jerry’s door and turned it, but of course the door was locked. She had a key to his place, but it was hanging downstairs on the key keeper in her kitchen. She dropped to her knees to feel under the slimy green welcome mat. Amazing how people leave their keys in such obvious places, she thought as her heart pounded faster. A yell of victory nearly escaped as her fingers found the cold piece of metal. Still on her knees, she leaned over and slipped the key in, shivering as the door creaked open to admit her into the safe haven of her neighbor’s empty home.