Thief of Hearts Read online

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  The guards went, save for one who stayed behind to make sure Jared did his part of the dreary paperwork. Jared obediently followed him to the Security Office to fill out a report.

  For the rest of his shift, he couldn’t help looking over his shoulder and peeking around corners, as if the woman might have come back. Ridiculous thought…but Jared kept an eye out, regardless.

  He wondered who she was.

  * * * * *

  It took Kara an hour to stop trembling. Every time she started to calm down, the thought… Jesus! He almost had her! …would cycle back into her brain and she’d get the shakes again.

  Carlotti, who’d been an utter creep since he was ten (and possibly before that) had chased her around like a dog, cornered her and likely would have killed her (after having a little fun at first, the raping swine) if she hadn’t gotten the drop on him.

  She had spotted him before she was even all the way through the door of the club and immediately turned and walked out. She started running when she heard him scrambling behind her and the chase was on.

  Now, in the privacy of her apartment, she collapsed on her thirty-dollar thrift shop couch (tastefully upholstered in puke orange) and relived the chase. Carlotti was big, but fast…and driven. If fear had been the fuel for her legs, hatred was his.

  Screw up one lousy drug shipment for the guy by siccing the Man on him, she thought morosely and that five years ago! And he’s still holding a grudge, still wants to kill me. Guy’s watched a few too many Godfather movies .

  That was Carlotti’s problem—one of his problems, anyway—he fancied himself a Corleone, when in reality he was a Clouseau. Everyone on the wrong side of the law knew the mob wasn’t the all-seeing, vengeance-taking organization depicted in the movies. And as for “organized crime”—ha! It wasn’t organized at all. A few groups of loosely connected dealers, that was all. Sometimes they were successful in contracting crime to the local talent…most times, not.

  These days, the Mob was a lot more interested in legitimate business: video arcades, karaoke bars, and beauty salons. It was absolutely ridiculous how much a thriving salon could make in a fiscal year, especially if they also handled manicures. Lucrative and infinitely less dangerous.

  Only the real idiots stayed in the drug trade, she knew. Too much heat, the Feds had no tolerance for it and the fall was long if you got pinched. Carlotti, of course, was a real idiot and thus he fancied himself a Mob Drug Lord. And, as a faithful disciple of mob movie fiction, he was still after her. As he’d proved tonight.

  Shivering a little, she got up off the couch and headed for her mini-bathroom. No shower, a cracked tub and a rust-stained sink…the room was so small, when she sat on the toilet her knees touched the wall. It didn’t matter. It was hers and she liked to think of it as a fox den, a haven from predators.

  She sat down on the rim of the tub and started to fill it with warm water—after tonight, she needed to get Carlotti’s stink off her—and thought about the idiot. She’d run for the hospital, naively thinking he wouldn’t follow her to a well-lit, populated building. She hadn’t counted on how deserted a hospital would be at three a. m. He’d finally cornered her and found out that a thief was never more dangerous than when her back was to the wall.

  And the doctor who had seen everything—what was that about? He’d watched her, tried to warn her and she could still feel the heat of his dark gaze. If she closed her eyes she could still see him: so broad-shouldered he nearly filled the doorway, with lush dark hair and the blackest eyes, strong, long-fingered hands…and a grin like lightning, a grin that lit up his whole face.

  He’d chased her, but, to her surprise, not to hurt her or turn her in. To ask if she was all right. To ask if she needed a safe place to stay. She must have stared at him for an hour, or so it seemed. Who knows what she might have said—or done—if Security hadn’t showed up. His gaze had been so curiously intense and his smile…his marvelous smile…

  A sudden thought made her straighten up so quickly she nearly tumbled into the tub. The doctor had seen Carlotti. And could testify against him. If the D. A. found out, he’d subpoena the doc in a nanosecond. The doc couldn’t testify to much, but anything was a start—didn’t Capone go down for tax evasion? The D. A. would be glad to get Carlotti on trespassing and attempted assault, if only so he could introduce his suspicions to a judge.

  If word got out that there was one eyewitness, others would certainly follow…the D. A. could build a case from whispers. God knew they did it all the time. And Carlotti’s worst fear was doing time. When he was thirteen, he’d killed a witness to his shoplifting, just to avoid being shipped back to Juvie.

  The doctor was in very real danger. Carlotti had to shut him up, the sooner the better. The psycho wouldn’t have to worry about her—the D. A. was at least as interested in putting her behind bars as he was in Carlotti—but he had to worry about the doctor. He probably had men working on the problem already.

  “Crap,” she sighed and got up to make the first of several cups of coffee.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The next night, Jared was still thinking about the woman and still mentally yelling at himself to forget about her. You’ll never see her again , he told himself, followed by, also, the whole thing was probably a hallucination brought on by too much paperwork. Proof that spending too much time on chartwork is bad for you. Trouble was, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Even now, when he was supposed to be snoozing in the third floor on-call room, he was tossing and turning on the narrow bunk, fantasizing about what’s-her-name instead of getting the sleep he needed.

  He’d asked around, but no one knew of a beautiful blonde goddess who ran like a deer and punched like a middleweight champion. Some of the nurses had suggested it was time he started dating again. One of the orderlies told him once he got more sleep, the hallucinations would stop. That was the trouble with being the hospital wiseass…when you had a serious problem, no one believed it.

  Tap-tap.

  Hell, it wasn’t like he was hard up for female companionship. He worked with at least ten female docs and three times that many nurses. Not to mention x-ray techs, the lab ladies, the social workers…heck, wasn’t the hospital chaplain a woman? One of the benefits of being an E. R. doc was that he got to visit all the wards, got to meet all the—

  Tap-tap.

  —staff outside his department and he should just—

  Tap-tap-tap.

  “What the hell is that?” he muttered, getting up and crossing the room. He had a flashback to one of his literature classes. “Who is that tapping, tapping at my chamber door?” he boomed, pulling back the curtain and expecting to see…he wasn’t sure. A branch, rasping across the glass? A pigeon? Instead, he found himself gazing into a face ten inches from his own. “Aaiiggh!”

  It was her. Crouched on the ledge, perfectly balanced on the balls of her feet, she had one small fist raised, doubtless ready to knock again. When she saw him, she gestured patiently to the lock. He dimly noticed she was dressed like a normal person instead of a burglar—navy leggings and a matching turtleneck—and wondered why she wasn’t shivering with cold.

  He groped for the latch, dry-mouthed with fear for her. They were three stories up! If she should lose her balance…if a gust of wind should come up…the latch finally yielded to his fumbling fingers and he wrenched the window open, grabbing for her. She leaned back, out of the reach of his arms and his heart stopped—actually stopped, ka-THUD!—in his chest. He backpedaled away from the window. “Okay, okay, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you now would you please get your ass in here ?”

  She raised her eyebrows at him and complied, swinging one leg over the ledge and stepping down into the room. He collapsed on the cot, clutching his chest. “Could you please not ever ever do that again?”

  he gasped. “Christ! My heart! What’s going on? How’d you get up there? Did the nurses lock all t
he entrances again? They do that when they’re overworked…”

  “Quoth the raven, nevermore,” she said and helped herself to a cup of coffee from the pot set up next to the window. At his surprised gape, she smiled a little and tapped her ear. “Thin glass. I heard you through the window. ‘While I pondered, nearly napping, suddenly there came a rapping, rapping at my chamber door. ’ I think that’s how it goes. Also, the man you saw me bludgeon into unconsciousness dropped a dime on you today. ”

  “He what?”

  “Dropped a dime. Rolled you over. Put you out. Phoned you in. Wants to clock you. Wants to drop you. Made arrangements to have you killed, pronto. Sugar?”

  “No thanks,” he said numbly.

  “I mean,” she said patiently, “is there sugar?”

  He pointed to the last locker on the left and thought to warn her too late. When she opened it (first wrapping her sleeve around her hand, he noticed), several hundred tea bags, salt packets and sugar cubes tumbled out, free of their overstuffed, poorly stacked boxes. She quickly stepped back; avoiding the rain of sweetener, then bent, picked a cube off the floor, blew on it and dropped it into her cup. She shoved the locker door with her knee until it grudgingly shut, trapping a dozen or so tea bags and sugar packets in the bottom with a grinding sound that set his teeth on edge.

  She went to the door, thumbed the lock with her sleeve, then came back and sat down at the table opposite the cot. She took a tentative sip of her coffee and then another, not so tentative. He was impressed—the hospital coffee tasted like primeval mud. “So that’s the scoop,” she said casually.

  “You’re here to kill me?” he asked, trying to keep up with the twists and turns of the last forty seconds.

  “You’re the hitman? Hitperson?” Who knocked for entry? he added silently.

  “Me? Do wet work?” She threw her head back and pealed laughter at the ceiling. She had, he noticed admiringly, a great laugh. Her hair was plaited in a long blonde braid, halfway down her back. He wondered what it would look like unbound and spread across his pillow. “Oh, that’s very funny, Dr.