“Maybe.”
“Wouldn’t doubt it. It messes up your plans, you mean.”
“Are you pursuing a case, or protecting your ass?”
“My integrity is none of your business.”
“And mine is yours?”
“You don’t have any.”
“What if…what if, Lieutenant, in this case I had more integrity than you?”
She laughed. “Is that how you snooker Temple Barr? Pretending to some mysterious higher moral ground? I am not Little Miss Mischief. This is a nine-millimeter Glock, buddy. It, and I, mean business. And if I have to punch a hole in your kneecap to keep you here, I will. Try doing your usual vanishing act with a knee brace, Mr. Moto.”
“Mr. Moto wasn’t a magician,” Max said, as if they were having an idle conversation that required minor corrections.
He had already examined the parking lot for unexpected quick exits and found himself caught disgustingly out in the open. Could it be that Molina had planned her approach that well?
Meanwhile, the sense that Temple was in danger was ticking like a maddened metronome in the back of his head, where migraine headaches start.
Of course, the more he worried, the less he dared show it, feel it. If he lost this game of cat-and-mouse here, he wouldn’t be free to rush to Temple’s rescue anywhere.
“This isn’t the end of the world, Kinsella.” Molina neared, the weapon still raised. “All I want to do is talk.”
“You want me to talk.”
“Well, talking usually is a two-way street.”
She was using the cajoling tone of interrogation-room cops the world over, a condescending parental teasing: you want to be a good boy, don’t you?
No.
He lowered his arms, a little.
“I think Temple’s in danger. I’m not going to hang around discussing whether you’re going to destroy your career by shooting me or not, in the knee or not. I’ll give you a rain check. Let me go to Temple, and I’ll come in to see you in twenty-four hours.”
“I do not make appointments with scum. I do not bargain with human vanishing cream. Now.”
“No.”
He moved closer to a row of parked cars.
Her feet scraped asphalt as she skittered faster than a whipsnake to block his movement.
The gun was leveled at his chest.
Was it going to be a game of shoot-me, shoot-me-not?
Yes, because Max was not going to be stopped. Even now Temple might be…Sean.
He moved again.
And stopped at an unexpected sound.
Molina had slammed the Glock down on the hood of the parked Ford-150 behind her.
Max couldn’t help wincing for the paint job.
“You can say no. I can say no.” She stepped toward him, in front of him, blocking his way, protecting her piece, daring him to go for it.
He lifted his arms from his sides. “You finally believe me about something, that I’m not armed.”
“Oh, you’re armed, and dangerous. I know that. I’m just saying you’ll have to go through me to get out of here.”
Max glanced to the pant-legs that covered her ankles. “And your side piece.”
She nodded. “I’m not going to drop my guard to bend down to take that off. Maybe you can grab it when I kick your head off.”
“That’s the most interesting proposition I’ve had all night, and that’s saying something after one too many hours in a strip club or two or three.”
“So you admit to patronizing the clubs.”
“I admit to doing what you’re doing here: investigating the clubs.”
“Who made you junior G-man?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I would love to be surprised about you, Kinsella. Unfortunately, that’s not possible. Now. Into my car and down to headquarters. Or not?”
She came closer, sideways stance.
It was to be, as the British say, fisticuffs.
That put him off balance. He had to play this out here, in its own time, or he could never get away to go to Temple.
For a nightmarish moment Molina morphed into Kathleen O’Connor, and he was back to the night when a stupid adolescent dalliance became his salvation and his cousin’s Sean’s death warrant.
But Molina was not the porcelain, poisonous Kitty. Her deadliness was direct: she wanted to wage war, not love, or at least not love as a variety of war.
There was no option. Max would have to fight her. And win.
Given Molina’s size, profession, training, and fierce personal stake, he couldn’t consider winning as the usual given.
Max, the semiretired, had once been expert in half a dozen martial arts, but he was two years rusty by now. Molina, he would bet, hadn’t worked out much recently either.
Still, she had the confidence, and the anger, to challenge him. It went against all the rules of police work. It was deeply personal.
Interesting. The only woman he’d had for a mortal enemy up to now would never confront him physically.
Max began calculating, not how to pass Molina to reach the gun but how to draw her into a weaker position. He didn’t feel an ounce of chivalry about the coming struggle. Her slamming the Glock down had released him from all that. If she wouldn’t hide behind the gun she certainly wouldn’t hide behind her gender. She wouldn’t hold back either.
Neither would he.
It was tentative at first, like a knife fight. They danced around, determining each other’s reach, reflexes, speed, strategy.
Eerily, the first inward rush to engagement was simultaneous.
The moves came fast and frantic then.
They grappled silently, all their limbs twisting to find a hold that would last, but each move resulted in an effective countermove.
Breaths became pants and then grunts, but neither resorted to martial arts cries, though both had done the drill. At nearly six feet, Molina was solid and surprisingly strong. Max was a steel eel, tensile and limber. Their fighting styles were as violently different as their personalities and made them serious opponents. Molina’s determination to subdue a suspect she had hunted for months, come hell or high water, met the skilled desperation of Max’s need to end this contest and rush to Temple’s aid.
It ended in Max’s pinning Molina against the van wall, enforcing a temporary truce as they caught their breath, boxers clenched in each other’s arms like dizzy waltzers before breaking away to pound each other to oatmeal.
“We’re well matched, Lieutenant,” Max admitted between discreet pants.
Not good news. He couldn’t count on getting this over quickly and moving on to Temple.
“It’s not over,” she gritted between her teeth.
“No.”
He wasn’t really holding her. His hands had flattened against the metal beside her shoulders, one knee was braced between her legs. Technically, she was pinned, but he could see her mind reviewing a half dozen things she might try for the one right move, when he surprised her by speaking again.
“Don’t spoil the moment. This has been incredibly erotic.”
She broke their eye contact by whipping her head to the side, cheek to the smooth metal. “You’ll try anything,” she said, contemptuous.
“Yes.” He knew he sounded amused, but he meant to startle and irritate her at one and the same time.
She whipped her head to the opposite side. “Get out of my face.”
“That’s not what you really want.”
That brought her eyes forward, blazing. “Right. Next you’ll say that what I really need is a good screw.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Complicated! No. This is simple. Me cop, you crook.”
They both knew the truce was temporary, that either one could lash back into attack, and that both would be ready for it.
“Sure it’s simple. A simple matter of control, Lieutenant. Or overcontrol. It goes with your job. You’re on the job, all the time. You’re in charge, all the time. After a while, there’s no way not to be in control, in charge, on the job. Except this.”
“I can be out of this any second I want to.”
“But do you really want to?”