Finders Keepers

With that she gave the tiniest flick of the trigger mechanism and an incredibly sharp burst of what seemed like living flame shot up and down his leg. He nearly tore the tape loose cursing as she calmly replaced the weapon on the bed beside her.

“Like I said, sorry. But understand, that little jolt was only a love tap. If you try to jump me, I’ll give you a shot that’ll make you think you French-kissed a wall socket.”

This broad’s the one who needs “the best psychiatric specialists” in Boston! He glared at her.

Sam met his eyes. Had he bought her story? He knew he wasn’t a head case living in a commune, but would he believe that she thought so? It would sure make it easier if he did. “Okay, now let me help you out of the jacket and make you comfortable. Then you can talk.”

When he looked down at the nylon wrapping holding his arms immobilized across his chest, she said, “Yeah, it’s a straitjacket. Custom made for me by an outfit in St. Louis called Leather and Lace. Scoot over to the end of the bed but stay sitting,” she instructed, slipping that vicious stun gun into her waistband.

He complied, desperate to get the damn tape off so he could ask if she ever planned to let him use the bathroom. Or, maybe the whole shtick was a ruse and she just intended to talk until his bladder exploded. But, she moved behind him and pulled the robe from his shoulders with one hand, then unfastened the straps of the straitjacket.

One of Matt’s first assignments at the Miami Herald had been to write an exposé on abuses in a Florida mental facility. As he shrugged off the restraint, he knew regular hospital jackets weighed a hell of a lot more than this lightweight job. Leather and Lace. An uneasy thought crossed his mind. He just knew she was into serious S & M when she dangled a pair of handcuffs over his shoulder. When she yanked the tape from his mouth, his lips burned like they’d been basted in jalapeño juice. “Son of a bitch!”

“Click the cuff on your right wrist,” Sam said, stepping back and moving around to face him again. He was big and angry and his eyes burned into her like lasers. She felt more uncomfortable than she had on her first snatch—hell, even on her first arrest as a rookie cop.

“You must be that S & M outfit’s best customer. Get a volume discount?” he asked, waiting to see what she’d do. Maybe this would be his chance. Then again, maybe not. He eyed the stun gun held unwaveringly in her hand.

“I imagine you need to use the facilities,” she said dryly, enticing his cooperation by nodding to the open door of a mold-encrusted bathroom.

His bladder did a couple of push-ups to remind him of how right-on that was. “Yes, I do,” he said grudgingly, clicking the cuff on his wrist.

“Get up slowly and walk inside, sit on the stool and attach the other cuff around the pipe beneath the bathroom sink.”

If he hadn’t had to go damn bad, he wouldn’t have been so cooperative. But he did so he was. She stood in the doorway, watching intently. When he had cuffed himself to the pipe, she continued to check out the small room until he felt on the verge of gargling. “You gonna stand there and watch?”

Sam finished her inspection of the facilities and regarded the irate man seated on the commode. He really thinks I’m some sort of sex pervert. The idea amused her. She couldn’t suppress a grin. “Water sports aren’t among my favorites, Mr. Granger.” She started to close the door.

“Turn on the television,” he said.

“Why should I?”

He hesitated. “I don’t want you listening.”

She stared curiously at him. What now? His face was the color of Spanish roof tile. “Listening for what?”

“Bathroom…noises,” he muttered.

She couldn’t stop the sudden burst of laugher. Bathroom noises. Jeez!

Matt became enraged. “You damned pervert! Straitjackets! Handcuffs! Now bathroom bondage.”

She held up her hands. The guy was serious. Sam didn’t mean to humiliate him any more than essential for security. “All right, all right, I’ll turn on the TV.” She shut the door with good intentions, but then was unable to believe she was saying, “I could play one of my CDs instead—the Chamber Pot Concerto in PP Minor.” She could hear him curse as she turned on the television, then flopped onto the bed and muffled her laughter with a pillow.

In the bathroom Matt thanked God for small favors. At least she wasn’t a nutcase looking for some cheap motel thrills. As he attended to the pressing business at hand—awkward as hell for a guy forced to do it sitting down—he considered his situation. Was she on the level with this “retrieval” stuff? Could he convince her that she had the wrong guy?

When she opened the bathroom door a quarter hour later, a pizza carton and two cans of Coke were sitting on the chipped particleboard table by the window. “Double cheese, pepperoni. Okay with you?” she asked, tossing the key to him so he could unlock the cuff from the drainpipe.

Matt sniffed the heavenly aroma of greasy spice and his stomach gave a growl of gratitude. “I’m happy starving your prisoners into submission isn’t your M.O.”

“You’re aren’t my prisoner, Mr. Granger. Now toss me back the key and take a seat.”

He eyed the stun gun and held up the dangling handcuff. “Coulda fooled me.” He sat on a rickety orange plastic chair and reached for a slice of gooey pizza.

“Eh, eh, eh,” she scolded. “First click the cuff to your chair leg.”

Scowling, he obeyed, then used his left hand to dig into the food. “Sure, I forgot. The handcuffs will keep me from falling off my chair and hurting myself. I’m a patient, not a prisoner. Say, can we talk about that?” he asked around a mouthful of pepperoni.

“You talk. I’m gonna eat,” she replied, devouring the first food she’d had in well over twelve hours.

“You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m a reporter for the Miami Herald. I came to San Diego to research a human interest story. About women hiding from abusive husbands, mothers hiding their kids from fathers trying to kidnap them. That sort of thing. I haven’t joined a commune.” He wasn’t about to mention Renkov and the Russian mob, the real story he was working on.

“That’s not the picture your aunt Claudia gave me.”

“Look, my aunt has a photographic memory—but no film. She’s the one who needs a shrink, not me.”

“I’ll let the two of you work that out with your doctors.”

“Call the Herald news desk and ask for—”

“Thought you said you were doing a human interest piece. The story you described is a feature, not news,” she said, wiping her mouth.

“You have a dual major in jujitsu and journalism?” he asked, sinking his teeth into a slab of pizza and imagining it was Aunt Claudia’s jugular.

She ignored his outburst. “Look, I’ve heard it all before. Everyone has a reason why I should let them go. Some of them are pretty good.”

He took a deep breath, then said in his most intimidating tone, “I could sue the socks off you once we get to Boston. Even press criminal charges for kidnapping.”

Sam remained undaunted. She tossed the paper napkin into the pizza carton, then walked over to her bag and removed a sheath of papers. “Believe me, I checked out your aunt’s story and background quite thoroughly before I took the job. I always do. Read these.” She handed him the papers.

Matt quickly skimmed down the pages, then crumpled them in outrage. “She swore out a bench warrant on me for stealing Uncle Harvey’s engraved Rolex!”

Sam just looked at the expensive gold watch on his wrist, saying nothing.

“For your information, my great-uncle gave me this watch personally while his sister Claudia stood there beaming. It was a college graduation present, for chrissakes!”

“Something else to settle with your aunt when we get back to Boston. She claims it’s a family heirloom and you had no right to take it.”

“This is false arrest. I’ll sue you! Hell, I’ll still sue her!”

“Lots of my retrievals threaten to sue me or have me arrested for kidnapping. Cult members—”

“Samaritan Haven is not a cult,” he said through gritted teeth. “It isn’t even a commune—at least, not the sort you yank brainwashed kids from. It’s really more of a hiding place where people drop out of sight.” Matt leaned forward on the table and combed his fingers through his hair in utter frustration. “I only moved into the place to check out a lead.”

He hesitated. How much should he reveal? He couldn’t endanger his source. That might get her and a number of other innocent people killed. Then again, if Samantha Ballanger had been hired by the Russian Mafia, she already knew that her targets were hiding in the complex. Finding them wouldn’t be difficult. He reconsidered. No, if that were true, he’d already be dead. He decided to take a risk.

“You ever heard of Mikhail Renkov?”

Sam nodded carefully. “The KGB guy who defected to the West in the last days of the Cold War? A big feather in the CIA’s hat, as I recall. Now he’s some sort of import-export millionaire, isn’t he?” Play dumb, Ballanger.

He nodded approvingly. “You read the newspapers. What they haven’t said, yet, is that he hasn’t exactly broken all his ties to Mother Russia. He’s up to his eyeballs in all sorts of illegal stuff—playing footsie with the Russian mob, even dealing with Colombian drug cartels—and I bet he has some pals inside the Company or even in State who’re turning a blind eye.”

“Hang on, Mel,” she interrupted, putting a hand up in dismissal. “Conspiracy Theory was a great movie—”

“And the nutcase Gibson played was right in the end, wasn’t he? Just let me finish. Remember reading about Renkov’s son buying the farm last month?”

“Alexi, the golf pro? Yeah, he was killed in a car bombing. Cops suspect the wife did it—to keep him from divorcing her and running off with his starlet bimbo of the month. Mrs. Renkov dropped out of sight and they’re looking for her.”

“Yeah, the car bomb was her final project to get her electrical engineering degree. Come on, a woman car-bomber? Tess Renkov didn’t kill her husband.”

Sam shrugged. In her checkered career she’d been a cop, paramedic and even moonlighted running down bail jumpers. What he said about the Renkov case could be true. All Pat had told her was that Granger was getting too close to a joint PD-FBI investigation of Mikhail Renkov and they wanted the reporter out of their hair.

“Look, if a bad actor like old Mikhail thought you’d killed his only son, would you stick around and chat?” he argued doggedly. “I think his golden boy was killed by daddy’s enemies. What we have here is a turf war with billions in Eastern Bloc cash at stake.”

“Don’t forget the drug cartels. They have lots of dough, too. But they’re not paying me. Aunt Claudia is. Maybe you can convince her about all this—after I collect my fee.” She shoved the key to the cuffs across the table so he could free his right arm from the chair.

“A one-track mind,” he said with a sigh of resignation. Convincing this dame was as likely as riding a zebra.

Sam watched him unlock the cuff, then took back the key and motioned him to sit on the bed. She knew he was getting tired of taking orders, but he was too sharp to try and jump her—at least just yet. He did as she asked resentfully, then watched as she smoothed out the legal papers he’d crumpled and replaced them in the bag she’d brought from the van.

Stubborn as a stump in hard clay but one fine-looking woman, he thought. Under different circumstances… Forget it, Granger. Remember how that stun gun smarts. Then again, if he could soften her up…so to speak. What the hell, worth a try. It wasn’t as if she was a dog or anything close. In fact, she was a looker. He’d only be doing what came naturally. And so would she, if her earlier reactions to him had meant anything. Usually he read women pretty well.

Sam approached him, holding a set of pajamas she’d taken from the bag. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his mind as she said, “Strip and put these on.”

He cocked his head and grinned, tsking. “With you watching, Ms. Ballanger? You adding voyeurism to bondage?”

“I’m a trained medical professional,” she said coolly. A little bit too coolly. Her indifference to the visions of Matt Granger’s naked body was pure bravado. Sam tightened her grip on the weapon as she tossed the pj’s at him. She was finding that pimply kids spaced out on cosmic visions were a lot easier to handle than one smart-mouthed newsman with a body to die for.

He caught the pajamas deftly, then extended the upper garment back to her. “I’ve always been a bottoms guy myself. Want the top?”

She could feel his eyes on her suddenly hardened nipples as surely as if he had X-ray vision. “No thanks. Never liked The Pajama Game. Just put on both pieces,” she said with satisfaction when readily visible evidence of his reaction started to grow in his jeans.

“Well, what the hell, Ms. Medical Professional, you like ‘The Bondage Game’ well enough. And apparently the Chippendales.”

He gave her another of those infuriating grins and kicked off the slippers, then pulled his shirt over his head…very slowly. She could see every muscle flexing. Tossing it carelessly to the floor between the beds, he started to remove his jeans. She was pleased when he paid careful attention to unzipping his fly. It must have been uncomfortable as hell, she thought smugly, but when he dropped the jeans to his ankles and kicked them away, her mouth was dry. Other places on her body weren’t.

According to her cover story, his attic floorboards were supposed to be warped, but all the timbers below were in great shape. Bloody Architectural Digest quality, dammit! The most interesting one at the moment was the structural beam jutting straight out as he met her eyes and dared her.

“Gonna zap me?” he whispered.

She pointed the stun gun at the strategic place and replied, “If I do, we’ll have a wiener roast, so don’t tempt me.” More like a kielbasa roast. “Just be a good boy and put on the pajamas,” she managed to say with a level voice. He turned around and reached casually for the pj’s, giving her a full view of that great set of buns. Fits with the sausage.

Looking over his shoulder as he slipped the bottoms on, he said, “Didn’t mean to moon you, but I imagine a trained medical professional’s seen it all, hasn’t she?”

“Pretty much.” She managed to leash her libido by reminding herself about the cool ten K plus expenses she’d collect from dear old Aunt Claudia. Right now that road was looking really long, hard and rocky. Don’t think long. Don’t think hard. Don’t think rocks, dammit!

“Good night, Mr. Moonie.” She motioned for him to lie down on the bed.

He stretched out and then folded his hands as if to pray with the open cuff still dangling from his right wrist. “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray—”

“You’ll have to do your nightly devotions hands unfolded. Reach down and click the cuff to the bed frame.” She pointed at the exposed steel bar beneath the box spring.

“I work much better with both hands free, darlin’,” he said, grinning again as he patted the mattress.

“You’ll only need one hand free to do what you need to do tonight.” Sam couldn’t help the snide tone any more than she could keep her eyes away from the tent pole under the sheet.

Muttering about feminine perversity, he clicked the cuff to the bed frame and closed his eyes. Sam flipped off the lights, undressed and slipped into her own bed. After a few moments, she heard him whisper.

“You know, a few times today, I thought I heard Cole Porter tunes.”

She rolled on her side and stared across the darkness separating them. “I was playing an Ella Fitzgerald CD of Cole Porter’s hits. I like his music.” The minute she replied, she could’ve kicked herself. Not smart to get involved, especially in a snatch as unorthodox as this one.

“Me, too. My favorite’s ‘Night and Day.’”

Too late now. She replied, “Hmm. I’d never have taken you for a romantic. Mine’s ‘Love for Sale.’” His soft chuckle caught her by surprise.

“Certainly it is.”

Damn the man. So she was mercenary. So what? A girl from South Boston didn’t have all that many options, unless she considered driving over the road with Uncle Declan. But Sam would be damned if she explained herself to a preppy-turned-reporter like Matt Granger. In a few minutes she could hear the sound of soft male snoring blending with the wheeze of the air conditioner.

She lay in her bed staring at the ceiling, wide-awake.

Chapter 2

“Rise and shine, Prince Charming. It’s time to hit the road for Boston.”

Matt opened one eye and blinked at Sam, then pulled the pillow over his head, muttering through the feathers, “Go away, Fairy Godmother.”

“My, aren’t we testy this morning. You had a good night’s sleep.” She tried to sound self-satisfied but knew it ended up coming out with too much edge.

He tossed the pillow to the foot of the bed and stared balefully at her. Sam Ballanger looked like she hadn’t gotten one wink last night. Maybe the advantage he needed? Matt decided to push the envelope. “Cranky as hell, huh? I offered to help, but nooo, Ms. Medical Professional, you had to stand on principle…or should I say lie on it?” He grinned at her and watched her seethe.

“Your snoring carried all the way to the Continental Divide. That’s what kept me awake,” she shot back. “Believe it or not, you’re not that irresistible. In my book, no man that badly in need of rhinoplasty is.”

“Liar. I snore soft like a baby.”

She tossed the key onto his bed and shrugged casually. “Just get up and head for the bathroom.”

He shoved the sheet down to his waist and rubbed his hand over his right deltoid muscle. “You should try sleeping with one arm cuffed to a bed frame sometime. I probably have a dislocated shoulder. Now, if you were really a trained medical professional, you’d know how to kiss it and make it well…”

“Very funny, Mr. Granger. Now please move it,” she said in what she hoped was a bored voice. “While you take care of necessities, I’ll get us some breakfast from the vending machines in the motel office.”

“Sounds yummy,” he groused, still lying flat on the lumpy mattress.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” she replied cheerfully.

“I thought I was a ‘patient,’ not a beggar.”

“Quit stalling. We need to be on the road within half an hour if we’re going to make it anywhere near Denver by tonight.” She waved the stun gun just to emphasize her point. She could see him glance away from it to the table where she’d laid out the sleep mask, bandages and a roll of medical tape.

Matt could also see that the jim-dandy custom straitjacket was draped over the back of the chair. One more day’s ride locked in solitaire and his reflexes would be so shot that he’d never be able to take her. Still, there was the fitting on the gooseneck pipe under the bathroom sink…

Sam pointed to a small vinyl zipper bag lying on the top of the battered old television and said simply, “Toiletry items.”

“How the hell am I supposed to brush my teeth, not to mention shave or take a shower, with my right hand cuffed to the drainpipe?”

“No showers, Mr. Granger. We’ll both get a little ripe before we reach Boston. For the rest, you’re a big boy. Be resourceful and you’ll figure it out.”

I’ll be a hell of a lot more resourceful than you’d ever imagine, Sammie, babe. Matt let her lock him in the bathroom. He always thought clearer on an empty bladder.

While he was taking care of business in the other room, she peered through a broken slat in the blinds. No one in sight. Might as well go to the office and see what she could scare up for breakfast.

When Matt heard the outside door close, he fleetingly considered yelling his lungs out for help. But then he recalled that she’d told him they were the only customers in the fleabag. Probably true. Even if he could make himself heard over the blaring TV, it was doubtful a desk clerk in a dive like this would give a shit. Even if he did, “Nurse Ratchet” would make him believe her poor “patient” was having a seizure or a conversation with Bart Simpson.

Matt set to work on the gooseneck pipe. “Great. Everything in this dump is made of Lego blocks except the plumbing. Which is made of friggin’ Swedish steel!” He grunted, red faced with strain, wrapping both hands around the connection to give it one last desperate try. No go. He needed something for leverage. “Not even a Boy Scout would carry a pipe wrench in his jammies,” he muttered savagely as his eyes swept frantically around the small mold-encrusted room for anything he could reach that might help.

That’s when he saw it. A rusty old C-clamp holding together the broken curtain rod over the window. It was partially obscured by the hideous blue-and-orange plastic ruffle and a generous layer of cobwebs. Matt Granger was a tall man with long arms to match his lanky frame. But stretch as he might, his fingertips could only come within six inches of the damn clamp. He yanked on the ruffled “window treatment,” hoping to rip the rod loose from its mooring. No go, again.

With a sickening thwap the rotted brittle plastic flew off the rod, smacking him in the face with sticky cobwebs. Snarling an oath about spider spit, he threw the filthy monstrosity into the tub and pulled the shower curtain closed to cover it up. Then he wiped up the mess around the sink and in his hair, praying she wouldn’t notice the missing plastic ruffle on the window. No sense giving Sam any ideas about checking out the next accommodations more thoroughly than she had these. Then he heard the front door open.

“Ready or not, here I come,” she sang out.

Matt decided if he was ever going to get away from this single-minded broad, he’d better take his chance now. Just thinking of her little “object lesson” with the stun gun made him wince, but what the hell. She’d have to move in real close to use it—not that he doubted for one instant she’d hesitate. Still, he reasoned, he was a big man and she was a small woman. How hard could it be to overpower her before she got a shot at him? Trained medical professional. He snorted as the bathroom door opened.

“All I could get was a carafe of their coffee and a couple packages of cake doughnuts, artifacts that must’ve been in the vending machine since the dawn of automation.” Sam glanced at his bare chest and the droplets of water dripping from his hair and face onto those broad shoulders. No good, Ballanger. Ah, not good, but beautiful. She tossed him the key and spun around, stalking out of the doorway to wait while he unlocked the cuff.

Matt noted the way she’d looked at him. Maybe he could give good old lust one last college try before chancing the stun gun. “Coffee smells good,” he said. In fact, it smelled like a blend of road tar and battery acid, but he was used to the stuff in the Herald’s newsroom, which was even worse.

When he reached for his clothes, piled in a heap on the floor, Sam said, “No. Leave them. I’ll put them in the van later.”

He gave her a quizzical look, then grinned. This was working out even better than he’d hoped.

“Put on the pj’s again and slip on the robe and house shoes. It looks more convincing if a patient’s not dressed in street clothes,” she explained quickly, too quickly.

“So much for romance,” he mumbled as he reached for the discarded pajamas and coarse terry robe, taking his time, letting her stare at his naked chest. After he’d belted the robe casually around his middle, he walked over to the table, never breaking eye contact with her. “Pour me some java?”

“Pour it yourself,” she snapped, gesturing with the gun. As he did so, she watched the front of the robe gap open. He hadn’t buttoned the pj top, either. She could see his chest again. Had he done that deliberately? Of course he had. Ballanger, you have to be a moron to fall for this guy, she chided herself, watching him take an experimental sip of the coffee and reach for a doughnut as he sat down across from her.

Smiling, he swallowed down the large Styrofoam cupful as if it were medicinal. “Ah, nothing like a jolt of caffeine in the morning.”