Lonesome Lawmen

Four-1

Four

“Are you sure you don’t mind me crashing with you?” asked Dani, speaking to “Rosebud” through the microphone that came with her new laptop computer. The Internet connection had been as easy to establish as the salesman said it would. Amazing. Even better, it was virtually untraceable, after she’d routed it through the local university Internet connection thanks to some email tutoring courtesy of another cyber-buddy named Spook. “It’s such short notice …”

“You think I’m gonna pass up a chance to meet, “Blossom” in the flesh, just cause I gotta change the sheets on a bed?” Rosebud, a.k.a. Carolyn Ryan answered.

“Ooh, no pressure.” Dani grinned, suppressing a wince at the sound of this cyberspace nickname, one of several Dani used to hide her identity, being spoken aloud. Some names should stay in cyberspace. Actually, all of them, Dani decided ruefully. Still, it was comforting to find out that Rosebud was as nice in voice as she was in cyberspace. If all the “friends” on her list were as helpful, her exercise in hiding was going to be almost easy.

Rosebud laughed. “Twenty minutes, okay? Or do you need more time?”

Twenty minutes seemed like a long time, but Dani agreed and rang off. Like Tennessee Williams’ Blanche DuBois, she would rely on the kindness of strangers.

This first contact was a good omen, she decided, taking a last look at the nearly unrecognizable face in the mirror attached to the wall behind the desk.

A shower, minus the Psycho victim overtones of the past months, had taken some of the tension from her face and removed all of the grime acquired during her panicked crawl through the bushes outside the safe house.

Without regret, she had discarded everything but her shoes. They were too comfortable to toss aside and were a reminder of a happier time with her real-time friend, Kelly Kerwin.

Happy reminders stacked on top of each other put a desperately needed wall between her and the images of Peg’s bloody death.

Her black power suit was short enough to be distracting, yet conservative enough to blend. She’d bought and applied cosmetics, but opted for a smart little hat rather than give her hair into the care of a strange hair stylist. She was desperate, not crazy.

She looked at her watch, then began to assemble the stuff she was taking with her. She’d already been in one place too long. She could almost hear her hunters, lawful and unlawful, baying in the distance.

If Hollywood was even half right, public accommodations were easy to check. If they failed to pick up the scent, they would head straight for anyone she was known to be acquainted with. Thanks to the inventors of the Internet and Spook, they shouldn’t find the ones that mattered.

Under the impression he was helping her research a book, Spook had been tutoring her via email about the byways and sly-ways of the hacker milieu. Reputed on the boards to be former CIA, Dani “met” him shortly after going into hiding. A lucky find, possibly even a life-saving one.

Dani smiled slightly, thinking about the cyber-pass he’d made last month. At the time, she’d thought it a funny coincidence that he actually lived in the Denver area, but she didn’t plan to contact him unless she had to. She wasn’t working on a romance plot this time.

Before calling Rosebud, she’d taken the time to assemble information about the city. She had to be able to move around quickly. Hesitation could be fatal.

The hardest part of her exercise in independence, besides not getting killed, would be finding ways to fill the long days and longer nights. She had to polish up the last two chapters of her book, but that wouldn’t take long. If necessary, she could play tourist, her hunters wouldn’t expect that.

She packed her computer in the briefcase she had bought to go with the suit. The thumb drive containing her book and the personal items she had bought followed. The list of friendly strangers and places went into the pocket of her suit.

One thing remained.

She’d almost left it where it fell when Peg went down. She still didn’t know why she had picked it up. Now Dani extracted it from her backpack, the metal of the handgun striking a chill to her heart and her palm. Tears burned the back of her eyes, but they failed to cleanse away the hard reality of why Peg and the others died.

Betrayal.

It had always been there. She would have realized it before now if her senses hadn’t been dulled by the waiting. What other reason was there for the sense of foreboding that had hung so palpably over the safe house? Or her nightmares dripping with blood? The killer who had known Peg was supposed to be gone or he would have looked for Dani and found her.

No, Dani didn’t wonder if she had been betrayed. She wondered who had betrayed her. Neuman who had loved Peg? How could she not wonder about Peg’s sudden illness or forget he didn’t know Peg had come back?

What about Niall, with his shy, dark eyes and his high society fiancé in New Orleans planning their fancy Christmas wedding? The differences in their income bothered him. He had talked about it a lot. Asked Dani if she thought it would be a problem—in the mistaken impression that romance writer was synonymous with advice columnist.

She couldn’t put a traitor’s face on them or trust them until she did.

Weighted with that awareness, she studied Peg’s handgun, turning it in the light, adjusting to the feel of it in her hand. It was weightier than she’d expected. Could she point it and pull the trigger? Could she do it knowing the bullet would explode from the chamber, flying straight and true to the target? Watch it enter without mercy, tearing through skin, flesh and bone, spilling blood—

So much blood.

She shuddered. Was violence the only defense against violence—

Moral musings fragmented when she saw the safety. It was “off.” Of course it was. Peg had been ready to use it. No hesitation in her mind about bullets flying into bodies.

Dani’s hands shook as she changed the setting, then tucked the weapon in her briefcase. She sank back on her heels and thought about her mad dash from the burning safe house. The backpack with the unsafe gun bouncing against her back.

Everyone had always said irony was her strong suit.

She’d picked a bad time to almost prove them right.