Kissing the Key Witness. Jenna Ryan

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СКАЧАТЬ a masochist, but I didn’t see a wedding ring.” Pulling on a light jacket over her jeans and tank, Maya closed her locker. “I want fresh air, a soft bed and no more cop questions. I figure if I’m lucky, I might get one of those things.”

      “Wait.” Jamie caught her sleeve. “I want to tell you how sorry I am about Adam. I talked to him last spring, when he came in with a wounded suspect. I think he cared about you. A lot.”

      Because she knew her usually cynical friend meant well, Maya smiled. “Thanks. Don’t let Driscoll bully you into double shifting.”

      She made it through the door this time, snagged an apple from the lounge and made her way along the maze of hallways to the staff exit.

      Adam’s face was in her mind. How could it not be? Then Tal’s appeared over it, and she whooshed out a breath.

      Did visualizing Tal above the man she’d married, divorced and watched die tonight make her a monster?

      Did she want to answer that question?

      “Not until my brain defogs,” she said to the air.

      Physicians were supposed to be compassionate, caring people. She had that covered. But what about selfless and forgiving? What about honest?

      To block thought—and she desperately wanted to do that—she slipped her earbuds in and scanned her iPod for David Bowie.

      Night had begun to fracture as dawn approached. Slivers of orange and red floated over a shimmering horizon.

      They’d gotten married on the beach, she recalled. She’d let her mother arrange everything, from the rehearsal to the reception. She’d even let her set the larger-than-life guest list. She shouldn’t have, but she’d known her mother was dying, and she’d wanted to indulge her in every possible way, right down to rushing into marriage with the wrong man.

      At least her mother had wanted to see her married and happy, unlike her father, who’d ditched them both before Maya’s fourth birthday in favor of—Well, twenty-six years later, that was still an open question. No one really knew what he’d wanted or where he’d gone.

      Her uncles blamed his leaving on a pretty young accountant he’d met in Jamaica. Cousin Diego insisted he had a second family stashed away in Tennessee, but that was more likely Diego’s own twisted fantasy. Her mother maintained he’d simply needed space.

      The apple turned to mush in her mouth. Maya dropped the uneaten half in a trash can, breathed in the still-humid air and told herself it didn’t matter why her father had taken off. It was the act that counted, and his leaving had hurt her mother far more than it had her.

      Rooting through her shoulder bag, she located her keys. Tal would want to talk to her at some point. The thought came out of nowhere and brought a fatalistic “Damn” to her lips. Her avoidance layer was wearing extremely thin.

      High above, palm fronds rustled. The shadows that lingered lengthened and shifted. The scent of verbena swirled around her. Stars still twinkled overhead, but the quarter moon was waning.

      Maya located her car, then caught a sound much closer to the ground than the palm fronds.

      She snapped her head to the right. For a woman who’d lived in Miami most of her life, it was an automatic response. Big-city girl, big-time guard.

      For a moment there was nothing; then she caught a crunch of pebbles to her left. The black blur sprang at her before she could turn. It hit her hard and tackled her to the side of a large truck.

      The impact knocked the air from her lungs. Her head slammed against the window; her shoulder against the metal frame.

      Her assailant was bigger than her, Maya noted. Bigger, heavier and with momentum on his side.

      But she’d lived with a cop; she knew how to evade the hand that tried to wrap around her throat.

      Using her heel, she spiked his instep. Then she shoved her knee into his groin. She heard a rough hitch of breath and recognized the pain beneath it.

      He slapped her back with his arm, and this time when her head hit, stars glittered.

      She shook it off, had to. If she didn’t, he’d catch her with the next blow. Keys, she thought and, twisting sideways, freed her right hand.

      She heard a snarl as he attempted to pin her. She hadn’t spied a weapon yet, but it would be a moot point if he got his fingers around her throat.

      In the back of her mind, Maya registered a beam of light. It made him hesitate. It got him looking.

      It gave her a chance.

      He stopped her from stabbing his throat with her keys at the last second but forgot about the larger threat. While they wrestled, she rammed her knee full force between his legs.

      He released her, with a curse, muffled by the black balaclava over his face.

      Another light pierced the darkness. Swearing, he clutched his crotch. Then he dropped back, darted a look in both directions and bolted.

      Ignoring the pain in her head and shoulder, Maya shoved away from the truck and ran in the opposite direction.

      She grabbed her cell phone from her bag. Should she call 911 or Tal? After a quick debate, she went with the preferred option.

      Did it even ring before he answered?

      “Tal?”

      “Stop running, Maya.”

      “What? How do you know…?” With the phone pressed to her ear, and still heading for the hospital, she swung in a circle. “Where are you?”

      The collision brought her up short. If his reflexes hadn’t been a split second quicker than hers, she’d have kneed him dead center.

      “Right behind you,” Tal said from the depths of a long shadow. The hands that trapped her arms held her away from him just far enough to avoid injury. “You have really good aim, Dr. Santino.”

      She exhaled on a shaky curse. “You have even better timing, Lieutenant Talbot.” Then she whirled. “Did you see him? The guy in the balaclava? He pushed me into the side of that truck.”

      Tal followed her gaze and shook his head. “All I saw was you running across the lot.”

      “Which I was doing because some thug dressed in black tried to have a football scrum with me.” As her heart rate slowed, she picked out the booth near the entrance. “And, of course, Eddie’s on a break.”

      “Eddie being the parking attendant?” Tal seemed more interested in scanning the lot than in finding the missing man.

      Maya worked on uncoiling the tension knots in her throat, an easy feat in theory, not quite so simple in practice, with Tal’s fingers still curled around her arms.

      “I’m okay.” She gave a gentle pull. “Nothing but a headache and a few bruises. My wannabe linebacker’s probably in more pain right now than I am.”

      Tal’s lips curved, СКАЧАТЬ