“Sorry,” the man said impatiently. “This is a pay phone. I don’t have time to watch everybody who uses it. You get a crank call?”
“No, it was a legitimate call; I’m just trying to get in touch with the man who made it.”
“I can’t help ya. Sorry.” He hung up, and Milla blew out a frustrated breath as she followed suit.
“What did he say?” Joann asked impatiently.
“Yes,” said a low, emotionless voice behind them. “What did he say?”
Joann jumped and gave a startled little squeak as she whirled. Milla stood up so abruptly her chair shot backward and crashed into her desk, and somehow she ended up standing beside Joann, frozen, staring at the man who blocked her office door. Chills ran up and down her spine, and her heart thundered in her chest. They had been alone in the office. The door was locked. How had he gotten in? What did he want?
He wasn’t carrying a weapon, at least none that she could see. But though his hands were empty, she wasn’t reassured, because his eyes were the coldest, most remote eyes she’d ever seen. She was looking into the eyes of a killer, and though she was so frightened she was shaking, there was something mesmerizing about that gaze and she found herself unable to look away. Like a cobra, she thought, hypnotizing its prey before it struck.
There was a preternatural stillness about him, as if he wasn’t quite human.
Beside her, Joann was breathing in rapid little gasps, her eyes round as she stared unblinkingly at the intruder. Milla touched Joann’s hand in reassurance and Joann immediately grabbed her hand in a death grip.
The man looked briefly at their clasped hands, then back up to their faces. “Don’t make me ask again,” he said, still in that totally empty tone.
That voice. She knew that voice. But panic was still beating through her veins, and she couldn’t solidify the memory. Milla swallowed and managed to get the words out of her tight throat, but her voice was strained. “It was a pay phone. The man said he didn’t know who used it, that he was too busy to pay attention.”
A slight dip of his eyelids was the only acknowledgment the intruder gave of her answer.
There was no way they could get past him. He wasn’t a huge man, but he was big enough, about six-one, maybe six-two, with a lean, hard build that said he was all muscle and strength, with a dash of rattlesnake quickness thrown in. He was darkness, a shadow filled with almost palpable menace.
Then she knew, and she felt dizzy as blood rushed from her head. She reached out and grabbed the edge of the desk for support. “You’re the man who knocked me down,” she said, the words thin and shocked. And in that instant she realized something else, something that made her knees shake and almost give way. “You’re Diaz.”
Still his expression didn’t change. “I heard you wanted to talk to me,” he said.
7
Oh, God. Diaz. She remembered what True had said, that Diaz was an assassin, and she believed him. She had no doubt at all.
She should have expected this. True had told her just a few hours ago that people would put out the word they wanted Diaz, and he would find them. She had announced to a cantina full of men that she would pay a reward to anyone who could give her information about Diaz, knowing he was in the area, maybe even listening. Maybe she should be surprised it had taken Diaz thirty-six hours to show up; he could have been waiting for her yesterday morning. Then she remembered giving the men in the cantina her real name, Milla Edge, instead of Milla Boone as she usually did. Her telephone was listed under “Edge”; when she’d told True that her name wasn’t listed in the phone book, she’d meant “Milla Boone.” True himself had her home number only because she’d scribbled it on the back of one of her business cards. If Diaz had been on the ball, he could have broken into her condo before she’d even gotten up that morning.
Or maybe he’d just had something more interesting to do.
He stepped inside the office and closed the door, then moved to the side so his back wasn’t to all that glass. In doing so he blocked their exit past the open end of Milla’s U-shaped desk; if they wanted out from behind the desk, they would have to vault over it.
He dragged one of the chairs over and sat down, then stretched his legs out and crossed one booted foot over the other. “I’m here,” he said. “Talk.”
Part of Milla’s mind was blank; what did one say to an assassin? Hello, nice to meet you? But the other half of her brain was connecting dots and reaching obvious conclusions. Obviously, Diaz wasn’t the one-eyed man. But he had been observing the meeting on Friday night, so he was either hunting one of the men involved or was following them, expecting them to lead him to his target. She suspected the latter, because all he had done was watch them. And if anyone could find the one-eyed man, it was Diaz. He might know where the bastard was at this very moment.
Slowly she pulled Joann to the side, and stepped in front of her. It wasn’t fair that Joann should be dragged into the middle of this when it was all Milla’s doing, and her problem to solve. Milla pulled her chair out of the protective U of her desk and sat down, her knees almost touching his legs, though she was careful to keep that precious inch of space between them.
“I’m Milla Edge,” she began.
“I know.”
His complete lack of facial expression was unnerving. Everything about him was unnerving, yet she knew she could have walked past him on the street and not looked twice. He wasn’t a slavering madman, as would have befitted a homicidal maniac; instead he seemed very controlled and detached. His black hair was cropped short and his jaw was covered with a day’s worth of stubble, but that wasn’t disreputable. His olive drab T-shirt was clean, as were his black jeans and black rubber-soled boots. The short sleeves of the T-shirt clung to his biceps, but his arms were sinewy rather than bulky, roped with muscles and veins. If he had a weapon on him, she thought, it had to be tucked into one of his boots. That wasn’t terribly reassuring, nor was the fact that he was sitting in such a relaxed posture. A snake could strike without warning, but the line of poetry that began running through her head wasn’t about snakes; it was about a panther. Ogden Nash had said, “If called by a panther, don’t anther.” And yet she had called one to her, and now she had to deal with it.