Tall Dark Defender. Beth Cornelison
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to the enigma that was Annie but, in his opinion, didn’t detract from her pretty face. Clearly she thought otherwise, or she wouldn’t work so hard to hide the jagged pink lines.
As Jonah dug his wallet out of his back pocket, Farrout and Pulliam slid out of the booth and sauntered to the counter with their checks.
“Put it on my tab, doll face,” Farrout said, tossing his ticket on the counter and turning to leave.
Pulliam added his bill and clicked his tongue. “Ditto.”
Annie’s brow furrowed, and she shook her head. “But…we don’t—”
The men ignored her as they walked out, chortling to themselves.
From the booth, Jonah seethed over the men’s rudeness. He studied Annie’s crestfallen expression, her drooping shoulders and moue of disgust. She slapped the counter with the rag in her hand and huffed loudly.
When she raised her gaze to him, he quickly shifted his attention to his bill and pulled a twenty out of his wallet. He rose from the bench seat and approached the counter where she wiped up the day’s mess with more vigor than necessary.
Extending the ticket and cash to her, he smiled ruefully. “Keep the change.”
She glanced at the money and frowned. “But all you had was coffee.”
He lifted a shoulder as he returned his wallet to his pocket. “Maybe I want to help your day end on a positive note.”
Annie gaped at him as if she didn’t know what to make of his kindness. As if she’d never encountered generosity before. “But—”
“Annie!” Peter Hardin, the manager of the diner and Jonah’s key suspect in the money-laundering scheme, burst through the swinging kitchen door.
Jonah saw Annie tense as her linebacker-size boss stalked over to her.
“I need you to do an errand for me.” Hardin slapped a bulky tan envelope on the counter.
Annie’s face fell, and she glanced at her watch. “Now? It’s almost midnight.”
Jonah took his time putting on his jacket, unabashedly eavesdropping on the exchange. Annie’s distress around her boss piqued his curiosity.
“Yes, now. This has to be delivered to Fourth Street in the next half hour. It’s extremely important, so don’t be late with it. Guard this envelope with your life.”
Jonah clenched his teeth. Fourth Street was a notoriously bad section of town. This time of night, the area was downright dangerous. What was Hardin thinking, sending a woman on an errand alone in that part of town?
“But—” Annie hesitated, chewing her lip as if debating the wisdom of arguing with her boss. “If it’s so important, why aren’t you delivering it?”
Hardin glared at her. “I have my reasons. You want a job tomorrow, you deliver that package on time. Got it?”
Annie opened and closed her mouth in dismay, then nodded.
Her boss handed her a scrap of paper and hitched his head toward the front door. “That’s the address and the name of the guy you give the package to. Only to him. No one else. Got it? Now, go on. I’ll close up.”
After fishing her purse out from under the counter, Annie tucked the package against her chest with a sigh.
Jonah watched her leave the diner and walk past the parking lot without stopping. He frowned. She didn’t have a car? Walking Fourth Street alone at night could be suicide.
Without giving it a second thought, Jonah fell in step behind Annie. Peter Hardin might not care about his waitress’s safety, but Jonah wasn’t about to let Annie make that delivery unprotected.
Annie’s footsteps reverberated in the dark shadows looming around her. Alone on the downtown street, she clutched the manila envelope to her chest like a shield.
She shouldn’t be here. This part of town was dangerous, especially at this late hour. But how could she refuse her boss’s order? She couldn’t afford to lose her job. She only had a few more minutes left to make Hardin’s delivery, and he had been emphatic about the deadline—and the dire consequences if anything happened to the mysterious contents.
Just make the drop and get out of there. Get home. Get safe.
The sound of her shallow breathing rasped a harsh cadence in the quiet March night, and her heartbeat drummed in her ears like a death knell. She slowed her frantic pace, closing her eyes long enough to gather her composure.
Keep your wits and don’t blow this.
The drop-off address had to be close. She searched for numbers on the buildings, but the dilapidated storefronts and graffiti-decorated buildings bore no identification.
She gritted her teeth. Damn Peter Hardin for forcing her to do this dangerous errand! If she didn’t need her job so much, she’d have told him where to stick his order to do his dirty work. She sighed in disgust, wishing she’d stood up to Hardin.
But she’d always been a pushover. Her ex-husband had known it and taken advantage of that truth.
Squaring her shoulders, Annie kept walking, realizing how this decrepit neighborhood was a reflection of her life. Lonely, scarred and struggling to survive.
She’d had the typical fairy-tale dreams for herself as a girl—love and marriage, happily ever after. Instead she’d found a nightmare—fear and abuse, divorce from a man now serving time for a laundry list of crimes. After six years of unhappiness, at least she was free of Walt. Her job as a waitress at Pop’s Diner barely covered her bills, but her children were safe now. She was safe. That was all that truly mattered.
Yet as she searched for some evidence of where to take the package, she felt anything but safe. A prick of alarm nipped her neck. Though she heard nothing, saw no one, the uneasy sense that someone was following her crawled over her like a cockroach on her skin. She shuddered.
Annie drew a deep breath for courage, her nose filling with the stench of sewage, mildew and despair.
A scuffing noise filtered through the night from an alley just ahead of her. Her steps faltered. Her pulse jumped.
“H-hello?” she called, her voice cracking.
A hulking figure emerged from the black void. The man descended on her before a scream could form in her throat. He wrapped arms of steel around her, and a fleshy palm covered her nose and mouth. Lifting her as if she weighed nothing, her attacker pulled her into the dark alley and slammed her against a brick wall.
The collision knocked the air from her lungs. Shock and fear froze her limbs.
No! her brain screamed. Not again! Slow-motion images of her past flickered before her mind’s eye.
“You call this slop dinner?” Walt’s hand cracked against her chin in an upward arc.
Her assailant seized the manila envelope she’d sworn on her life she’d deliver only to Joseph Nance.
Panic surged inside her. Her fingers curled into the package, clinging to it for all she was worth. “No!”
“Give me the money, bitch!” he growled. His fist crashed into her mouth, and a metallic taste slid over her tongue.
Red smears stained the floor. Blood. Her blood.
Walt kicked her in the ribs, and crimson drops leaked from her nose and splashed onto the linoleum.
The man’s beefy fingers bit her flesh. He shook her. “Give it to me, or I’ll kill you!”
Past and present twined around each other. Numbed her. She did what experience had taught her was her best defense. She shut down. Drew into herself. Closed her eyes.