Undone by Moonlight Read Online Free Page A

jumbled.” He realized he was touching her when heat
shot up his arm. He let go immediately and picked up his coffee mug. “Thanks for
getting them, though. I’ll pay you back.”
    She returned to her seat, and he got a mouth-
watering
glimpse of her upper thigh. “You’re racking up quite a tab.”
    Tab. He pausing before drinking the
coffee. “I paid my tab at the bar and left. I headed down the street...toward my
apartment, but I saw...something.”
    “Somebody you knew?”
    Automatically, he shook his head. He didn’t think he’d talked
to anybody. Since he wasn’t much on conversation, he was fairly certain he’d
remember having one. Hell, he could have tripped over a damn dog and banged his
head on the sidewalk for all he knew.
    But even a bungling move like that wouldn’t have sent him to
drown his sorrows at O’Leary’s.
    “Somebody hit you,” she said, breaking into his thoughts.
    Startled, he stared at her. “How do you—”
    “You told me last night. You weren’t sure at first whether
you’d gotten hit or the Yankees lost ’cause they couldn’t, but since a picture
of the Yankees manager kicking home plate is on the front page of the sports
section, and you’ve got a bandage and a headache, I’m pretty sure you were the
one involved in hitting.”
    Sometimes, for no reason at all, he found himself tempted to
smile at her. “You’d make quite a detective.”
    “No, thanks, the job perils are a little steep for me. Who’d
hit a cop?”
    He shrugged. He had some basic assault cases pending on his
desk, but nothing that would warrant clobbering a cop. And it’d been years since
he’d made the mistake of sleeping with a married woman.
    Job. She’d jarred his memory again.
He’d been doing his job after the bar. He had a vague picture of a short,
dark-haired guy wearing a ball cap and overcoat running down an alley. He told
as much to Calla.
    “Why was he running?” she asked.
    “He was a thief?” he asked rather than said, though the reason
sounded right.
    “How did you know he was a thief?”
    “He was running away.” But he hadn’t worn his uniform since the
swearing-in ceremony two years ago when he’d made detective. How had the guy
made him for a cop? Or had he? “He had a bag, a red lady’s handbag,” he said
finally as a flash of the scene came back to him. “I was pissed cause I had to
chase him. I knew I’d be late for the wedding if I had to arrest him.”
    He’d known Calla would be furious. Plus, he’d wanted to see her
in her bridesmaid’s dress.
    “Did you catch him?”
    “No. Everything goes black then.”
    “That’s when you got hit.”
    “I guess.”
    “We can be fairly certain. The ambulance picked up you and
another man from an alley.” When he looked questioningly at her, she added,
“After you passed out last night, I made a few phone calls.”
    He recalled a ride in an ambulance, EMTs snapping orders, the
scream of sirens, flashing lights. His memory also provided a vision of his
purse snatcher’s battered face. Why was that so vivid and yet he only got a
fuzzy image of Calla in her bridesmaid’s dress?
    Life isn’t fair, Antonio. You ought to
know that by now.
    “I called the ambulance,” he said slowly, sliding off his stool
to pace the living room floor. The pieces were falling into place, and the
picture they formed wasn’t pretty. “When I woke up, my suspect was unconscious
next to me and beat all to hell. We were alone.”
    Calla angled her head. “So somebody hit you, then ran him down,
attacked him, dragged him next to you and left you both there bleeding?”
    The fact that she hadn’t immediately wondered if he’d beaten the suspect was a loyalty he had no idea
how he could have earned. Along with anger and worry, something sweet and pure
shot through him.
    Something he had no business enjoying.
    “Pretty implausible, right?” he commented.
    “It actually seems like the only explanation. Conversely, it
also