Adam’s Outlaw Page 3

  “Is this the way you usually restrain your women?” she asked.

  Adam stopped and whirled her around in front of him. They were standing at the secluded back entrance used for the transfer of hard-core prisoners. He didn’t know why he’d come in this way. Perhaps unconsciously he wanted to protect her from any reporters inside.

  “I usually don’t have to restrain my women. They tend to come willingly. If not, then I have my methods of gaining their cooperation. What about it, outlaw? Are you going to cooperate when we get inside, or do I turn you over to the press?”

  They weren’t talking about prisoners now and both of them knew it.

  “I’ll cooperate,” she said, “but I’m not an outlaw. My name is Toni, as in Antoinette, Marie Antoinette. And honestly, I’ve never been so scared in my life. Do you behead your prisoners?”

  He looked genuinely shocked. “You’re scared of me?”

  She was silent for a long moment. “No,” she admitted with a gulp, taking a step back. “I’m scared of me.” She hit her heel on the edge of the step and stumbled, clutching at his shoulder to keep from falling.

  He reached for her automatically, pulling her out of the light of the doorway and into his arms. “So am I,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Please, let me finish. This is important.”

  “I’m not stopping you, Marie Antoinette.” He dropped his arms and stepped back.

  “Yes, you are. I can’t think when you’re touching me, and I don’t want to feel like that. You’re the kind of man I don’t like, Captain Ware, a man absolutely convinced that his way is the only way. You see, I believe that every person is a part of humankind, in the truest sense of the word.”

  “So do I,” he argued, “otherwise I’d never be a police officer. The law protects the innocent and punishes the guilty—no exceptions.”

  “And you obey the law?”

  “Of course. I uphold the law. I’m good at what I do. That’s why no matter what I’d rather do, I have to arrest you.”

  She gazed at him sadly. “And that’s the problem, Captain Ware. Not your arresting me. It’s the no exceptions, everything clearly black and white. But you know what happens when you mix black and white? You’d better take me to your superior, Captain Ware, before you take a chance and find out.”

  “You don’t look like a hooker,” said the pasty-faced, elderly woman who was sharing the cell with Toni.

  “Shut up, Annie,” a voice admonished from an upper bunk. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “That must be a novelty for you, sweet meat, sleeping at night,” a man called from the jailer’s station farther down the corridor.

  “And you’re not drunk,” Annie went on. “What they got you in the tank for?”

  During the last hour Toni Gresham had been booked as a suspected mugger, fingerprinted, photographed, and put into a cell. She could have contacted her family, as she’d told Fred she would do, but they would be horrified. They had tried to understand when she selected engineering instead of liberal arts, when she wanted to teach in vocational school instead of a private institution. But her work with the elderly had stretched her relationship with them to the breaking point, and this episode would push it into oblivion.

  Toni had gotten herself in jail and she’d get herself out. The officer who’d led her to her cell explained that once she’d seen the judge, she could make bail and be out by morning. In the meantime, she was stuck in the holding tank. She sat in a half-dark cell with two other women. She had never been so uneasy in her life. She told herself that being caught unnerved her, not the man who had caught her. She was lying.

  “Why was I arrested?” she said to the woman named Annie. “I … because I’m with a group called the Peachtree Vigilantes. We’ve been patrolling the city parks, trying to discourage muggers. Tonight we—I got caught.”

  “Oh, yeah!” Annie pulled herself to her feet and strode across the tiny cell to the cot where Toni sat, as though she needed to verify with her eyes what Toni had said. Recognition sifted through Annie’s rheumy eyes. “I heard of you. You’re that friend of Dead Fred’s.”

  “You know Fred?” Toni felt better. The experience of being arrested was more disturbing than she’d imagined. Not only was the jail block dark, it smelled bad. But Annie’s knowing Fred took the edge off the strangeness.

  “Lord, hon, Fred’s one of us. Least he was before he went to work over at the Swan apartments. I never thought I’d see the day that Dead Fred turned respectable, but he ran into some woman who got him a job as a janitor and turned him around. Say … that was you, weren’t it?”

  “If you mean am I the one who got Fred a job, the answer is yes. I’m Toni Gresham.” Toni held out her hand and waited while the old woman stared at her in confusion.

  “Pleased to meet you, Toni.” Annie wiped her hand on her soiled skirt before taking Toni’s in a sturdy handshake. “I’m Annie. The street folks call me Omni Annie, on account of I hang around the Omni Center when there’s a basketball game or a concert. That’s my territory,” she boasted.

  “Better be careful, little lady,” the same male voice warned. “You shake Annie’s hand and you’ll draw back missing a finger.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to him. I don’t break the law. They just pick old Annie up occasionally to make the mayor happy. Say, I’ve heard about you helping out all those old folks. You’re the one who sends those kids over to put new locks on the doors, fix the plumbing and things when they need ’um?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Who got you?” Annie hung on to the edge of Toni’s bunk and peered at her in the darkness. “Who arrested you?”

  “I believe his name was Captain Ware.”

  “Uh-oh! Adam got you, huh? Tough. He’s honest, don’t cut no slack for nobody. Hey.” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You got no business being one of that gang. You’re too young to risk your life, even if you are after the bad guys. You ought to be going to parties and having fun.”

  Toni bristled. “We’re not all that young. I’m twenty-six. The Peachtree Vigilantes range from eighteen to eighty. But only Fred and I have taken up park patrol. Besides, what does age have to do with helping your fellow man? Something needs to be done. I’m doing what I can for those who need help.”

  “That’s what I keep trying to tell them too, honey,” the unseen occupant of the top bunk said with a dry laugh. “They didn’t buy my story either.”

  Annie gave a little snort. “So why’d they arrest you, Toni?”

  “Aside from Captain Ware’s thinking that I’m one of the bad guys, it seems to be against the law for a regular citizen to try to uphold the law when the legally sworn officers don’t. My whistle was a potentially dangerous weapon.”

  “Too bad they sent Adam after you. You might have outsmarted any of those other blue shirts. Guess you’ll have to stop now, won’t you?”

  “Don’t bet on it. I don’t intend to stop as long as the muggers don’t. Those elderly Swan Gardens apartment residents have been using that little park all their lives. They aren’t going to have to give it up if I can prevent it.”

  “Yeah, there was a time when I used that park myself,” Annie said softly, then added, “You got a good helper in Fred. I’m glad you got him off the street.”

  “Have you known Fred for a long time?”

  “Guess I know Fred as good as anybody,” Annie said proudly. “We go back a ways, before he took his fall.”

  “Will you two pipe down,” the third cell member said, covering her head with her pillow. “I told you I’m trying to catch some z’s before my old man gets me out of here.”

  Annie glanced at the woman and frowned. “You’d better hope he leaves you here, ’cause if he don’t, sooner or later you’ll be sleeping somewhere—permanently.”

  “Tell me about Fred,” Toni whispered, shifting her weight to allow the old woman to sit down beside her. “Why do you call him Dead Fred?”

 
Annie looked confused for a moment before accepting Toni’s invitation. “Well, he never was any good at keeping a job. He came up with the idea of taking a fall in front of a cab so he could collect money from the insurance company.”

  “Fred? He faked an injury?”

  “Nah.” Annie laughed. “Before he could try it he got in a real three-car accident and was knocked out cold. In the hullabaloo that followed, he got loaded into the wrong ambulance and was carted off to the morgue. When he came to, if he hadn’t a thought he was already dead, it would have scared him to death. He took off and they never did know what happened to the body.”

  Toni laughed out loud. “Dead Fred. Beautiful!” She laughed again. “And Captain Ware?” She hesitated. “He seemed pretty bitter. Have you known him long?”

  “Adam? Sure. We used to watch him on the television when he played football. He was something to see, catching that ball and running down the field, until he got hurt. Some maniac clothes-lined his head and turned him a different direction from his legs and he quit.”

  “A professional football player?” He was tall, and her rather intimate examination of his body had revealed he was built for quick moves. But there was something else about him, something hidden and held back, a force to be reckoned with in the height of battle. A conquistador, a bull-fighter, a commando, he might be, but never a man behind a desk.

  “Still holds the running record for the Saints, our Adam does. Comes in handy when he takes out after one of those kids. He can still keep up with most of ’em.”

  He’d certainly kept up with her, Toni thought ruefully. “Is he … married?”

  “Adam?” Annie laughed. “Wish he was. Don’t even have a woman so far as I know. Avoids them. Never gets close to anybody that I know of. Normal, the man isn’t. But then, the women he comes in contact with mostly ain’t exactly the marrying kind.”

  “Doesn’t he have any personal life?” Toni didn’t know why she was asking so many questions about Captain Ware. If she never saw the man again, it would be too soon for her.

  “Sure. In his time off he works with the boys down at the Boys’ Club. Coaches every sport they play. The chief keeps trying to send him on some of them plush uptown plainclothes assignments, you know, like guarding out-of-town big wheels. But Adam won’t go. You’re the first high-type woman he’s come in contact with. You interested?”

  “Me? Don’t be silly. I don’t have time for men and Adam Ware is the last man I’d ever be interested in. He’s much too—too powerful. I don’t think I’d want to be the one who …” She stopped short. The one who what?

  A picture of Adam Ware flashed into her mind, dark hair ruffled, green camouflage pants snug across massive thighs, a sensual, daring smile. Thinking of the man would never do. Visualizing him as some wild commando made her heart race. He represented complacency, the enemy. Her mind knew it, even if her body didn’t.

  The woman on the top bunk lifted her pillow from her head. “I don’t know, hon. There’s lots of women who think he might be worth it. Our Adam don’t fool around. He’s straight as an arrow. Believe me,” she added, sounding disappointed, “we’ve all tried, so don’t waste your time.”

  “I don’t intend to,” Toni said sharply, pushing the man’s insistent image from her mind. “Tell me about you, Annie.”

  Annie’s face went stiff and she pulled herself to her feet. “Nothing special bout me. There’s a thousand folks in this place with blank faces. I’m just one of them. Maybe sometime …”

  A clatter interrupted her as a uniformed officer pulled out a ring of keys and opened the cell door.

  “All right, Ms. Gresham, you’re out of here.”

  “You mean I don’t have to see the judge?”

  “You’re free to go.”

  “Fine, Officer, I’d like to make arrangements for my friend, Annie, also.”

  “Omni Annie? You don’t want to put Annie back on the street. In here she at least has a bed and we’ll give her breakfast in the morning before she leaves.”

  “I’m not going to put her on the street. I’ll take her home with me.”

  “No, ma’am. I don’t think that’s a good idea. Maybe you’d better have a talk with Captain Ware about that.”

  Talking with Captain Ware was the last thing Toni wanted to do. Maybe later, after she’d had time to analyze what had happened, after her nerve endings had settled down.

  “Thanks, Toni,” Annie said, “but I’d better just stay here.” She clasped Toni’s hand and gave her a sad smile.

  Annie’s acceptance of the officer’s comment was all it took. Toni would face Captain Ware again, even if the thought of seeing that dark stranger again made her heart beat so hard, her rib cage hurt.

  “All right, take me to the Captain.”

  In spite of her brave protests to Annie, Toni knew that the world thought she was too young and too idealistic. Her Pollyanna attitude was only her way of coping, though. Despite her whimsical approach to life, there were times she was just plain scared. But running scared didn’t change anything. Being optimistic was her shield against the naysayers.

  It only took a trip over to the Swan Gardens apartments to see what despair and neglect did to the elderly. The people who lived there had been proud, once. But their apartment house was no longer in the best section of town, and the owners had better places to spend their money. Pride could only be stretched so far.

  The director of the Atlanta vocational school where Toni taught knew he was lucky to get someone with her engineering background for what he could pay. In return, he reluctantly allowed Toni to assign her students real construction work as a hands-on learning experience. But what they were able to do for the Swan residents was only a drop in the bucket.

  Toni knew what they did was temporary, but it was doing something. The Peachtree Vigilantes were another temporary fix, born of desperate need and Toni’s determination. Except, Captain Ware had been right. It could be dangerous. It might be all right for her and Fred to take chances. But the backup team that came charging in after they had cornered the muggers was made up of the elderly residents who insisted on helping. Injury was a real threat. There would be no more vigilantes.

  Three

  Adam watched the heads turn as Toni Gresham followed a uniformed policeman through the squad room, heading toward his office. Hell, what was she doing there? Even wearing dirty jeans and a T-shirt, she obviously didn’t belong with the late-night crowd waiting for processing.

  He saw her lift her chin, allowing her guarded gaze to survey the cross section of humanity being interviewed by individual officers at scarred green metal desks. Even he recognized the hopelessness in the eyes of the prisoners slouched in a row of old school desks lined up against the wall. But Toni seemed to shore up her courage with every step she took.

  He flexed his right arm and grimaced. She might be small, but she packed a real wallop. He was glad he’d been alone on his mission. Being knocked to the ground by a female Tarzan with golden curls wasn’t something he’d care to have widely known.

  Adam bit back a smile. She’d done something that nobody else had done for a while. She’d distracted him enough to allow the rest of her gang to get away. Distracted, hell. She had reached down into his gut and fired up a part of himself that he thought had permanently atrophied. Even now he felt a quickening at the thought of her breasts pressed against his chest. And he’d kissed her. He didn’t even want to think about that. Damn! Why couldn’t she have just called a cab and gone straight on home?

  Toni saw the strain in Adam Ware’s face as she stepped hesitantly inside the glass-enclosed cubicle that served as his office. He was still wearing fatigues. The sweatband was gone, and his dark hair was tousled wildly across his forehead. He had a heavy five-o’clock shadow. The deep creases in his forehead and at the corners of his mouth told her his frown wasn’t newly acquired for her. Perhaps her insistence on talking to him was doomed to failure, but when had that ever stopped her?
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  Sitting in the darkened cell, she’d convinced herself that what had happened between them had simply been a bad case of a hormonal response induced by fear. She’d been infected with the Stockholm syndrome, the one that made a victim attracted to her captor. She couldn’t be interested in a man who saw the world only in terms of black and white.

  She was wrong. Adam Ware was still the sexiest man she’d ever seen. He was the irresistible neighborhood bad boy, the forbidden shadow man whose kisses were deliciously wicked in the late-night fantasies that had invaded her dreams more often recently. She’d thought such men existed only in the imagination. She’d been wrong about that too. Adam Ware was real.

  Shades of West Side Story, she thought, and shook herself mentally. She was there to get Annie out of jail, not play fantasy games about the man behind the desk.

  “Thank you, Officer Smith,” Adam said to the man who’d escorted Toni. “You needn’t wait.”

  Adam watched his subordinate nod and back out of the office, closing the door. Why hadn’t he asked Smith to wait? Another presence would make an exchange less threatening. This woman confused him and that was the danger he had to face.

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Gresham?” His voice sounded stiff and guarded.

  “I’d like you to arrange bail for my friend Annie.”

  “Annie?” He rubbed his eyes wearily, then slid his thumb and forefinger down the sides of his face. They grazed the stubble of whiskers, rasping like sandpaper in the silence.

  “I think she’s called Omni Annie.”

  “Why in hell do you want to go bail for Annie? She’ll be out of here in the morning anyway—after breakfast.”

  “I want her out of here tonight. I’ll pay her fine.”

  “Listen, outlaw, Annie isn’t really under arrest. We just haul her in several times a week so that she has a safe place to sleep. I’m not turning her out of a bed because of some bleeding heart. Now go home.”