Love at First Sight - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,31
going anywhere near the café would be dangerous if the man was the killer. But the way he had just suddenly appeared, she suspected he’d come in through some back way. Through the kitchen? She feared he’d leave the same way and she wouldn’t get a look at him.
“Stay put, Karen,” Jack ordered. “Denny, can you see from where you are? Denny? Are you picking up?”
Denny still hadn’t answered by the time Karen reached the street.
“Dammit, Karen,” she heard Jack say into her earpiece as she must have come into his view.
“I’m just going to take a quick look,” she said quietly and started across the one-way side street.
“DENNY?” Jack radioed again. Silence. Where the hell was he? Jack watched Karen advance toward the café, the hair on his neck prickling with foreboding. Dammit, he didn’t like this.
He told himself he knew Denny. His partner must have moved in too close to use his radio. That had to be it.
He held his breath as Karen disappeared behind one of the umbrellas on a patio table, then disappeared altogether as she rounded the corner of the building and dropped out of his sight.
“Karen?” No answer.
His earlier foreboding turned to dread and a terrible feeling of impending doom. “Denny? Have you got her?”
Silence.
His cop training argued that if he moved now, he’d blow the stakeout, ruin any chance Karen might have of identifying the man and more than likely spook the suspect and allow him to escape.
But right now Jack didn’t feel like a cop and it had nothing to do with being on probation or a forced two-week vacation. He swore and started to move in, telling himself he didn’t give a damn about anything but getting Karen out of there.
“Jack, I’m almost there.”
Her voice stopped him. That and the clatter of dishes. She must have gone around back and in through the kitchen. “You’ve got five seconds and I’m coming after you,” he said to her. Five. Four. Three. Two.
“It’s not him,” Karen whispered, sounding disappointed. “He’s not the man I saw with Liz.”
Jack felt the tension rush out of him. He closed his eyes. “Get out of there,” he told her. But his relief was short-lived. Now they’d have to do this again tonight.
“It’s a wrap, then,” Denny said over the radio, sounding more disappointed than Jack. Just as Jack had suspected, Denny had gotten too close to use his radio and had turned it off. Denny always had to be where the action was.
“Wait a minute,” Jack heard Karen say. “He’s not the man I saw with Liz, but, Jack, I saw him at the hotel Saturday night.”
Jack froze. The man in the back of the café got to his feet and started to leave by the side door.
“It’s Vandermullen,” Denny barked over the radio. “Move in.”
“Karen, get out of there,” Jack ordered as the other detectives swarmed the café.
Dr. Carl Vandermullen? Liz’s ex-husband had answered the ad? God, could Captain Baxter have been wrong about Carl Vandermullen?
Jack took the stairs from his hiding place and came out of the building just as Karen emerged from the café.
She saw him and stopped at the curb on the side street. He started across the street, feeling her gaze, feeling a connection that he could no more explain than he could levitate. Just seeing her filled him with such a rush of emotions that he felt himself smiling like a fool at her.
She smiled back.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw the car.
“Look out!” he cried, but his words were drowned out by the roar of the engine and the squeal of tires as the car turned the corner and bored down on Karen.
CHAPTER NINE
Jack dove for her. The car roared past, so close he could feel the heat of the engine and the rush of displaced air.
He and Karen hit the sidewalk and rolled into one of the patio tables, coming to a dish-crashing stop.
He looked down at the woman in his arms. Her eyes were closed, her face pale. “Karen?” he cried, fear making his voice crack.
She opened her eyes, then seemed to focus on his face, and smiled. “You really take this protection stuff seriously, don’t you.”
He laughed and shook his head, amazed she was all right, amazed how relieved he was. In those few seconds before she’d opened her eyes, his life stopped.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” he asked, relief making him downright giddy as he helped her to her feet.
“I’m fine.” Her smile