Cassidy and the Princess Read online

  Again a silence.

  “What about using me as bait?” There. It was said. “That’s what you were thinking earlier.”

  “You don’t know what I was thinking, Miss Merrick, and it’s a really lousy idea.”

  “It’s the only way I can go on with my life.”

  “It’ll be damn dangerous. I’m not sure I can get approval from my boss.”

  She swallowed hard. The police artist was watching the exchange with interest. MacKay was frowning. He looked intimidating when he did that.

  “Will you ask him?” she said.

  “What about your mother and…partner?”

  “I’ll manage that.”

  “They could get hurt.”

  “Not if they go on to Seattle.”

  His face must have expressed his doubts. “They’ll leave? Without you?”

  “Leave that to me,” she said. “Can you arrange it?”

  He hesitated.

  “I trust you,” she persisted.

  “You don’t know me.”

  “I know what I need to know. You went out of your way last night to make sure I was safe. You said you had a feeling and you came.”

  His eyes measured her. “I’ll talk to the captain,” he said. “In the meantime, you should be safe enough. My partner, Manny, will stay in the room with you, and there are two uniforms outside. If you return to the hotel, Manny goes with you.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m going to talk to my superiors.”

  “And get some sleep,” she said.

  He rubbed his face with his hands. “Guess I could use a shave, too.”

  A knock came, and the other detective entered, the one she remembered from yesterday. “Miss Merrick,” he said with concern. “Hoppy said someone came into your room last night, and—”

  “Hoppy?” she interrupted.

  He looked over at MacKay and his face turned red. Detective MacKay glared at him.

  “Hoppy?” she asked again with a smile.

  “His first name is Cassidy,” the detective named Manny said without looking at his partner, who was glowering.

  The name didn’t mean anything to her.

  “Hopalong Cassidy,” the detective prompted. “He was a cowboy on television in the fifties, a guy in a white hat.”

  A guy in a white hat. She liked that image.

  “Hoppy,” she tested again, and MacKay turned his glower on her.

  “I prefer Cass,” he said.

  She did, too, after thinking about it. Still, she tried to think of him as MacKay. That fit him, and it was far less personal.

  The artist had packed up his equipment. “Gotta go,” he said. “A lot of business today. You were great, Miss Merrick.”

  She felt a momentary pride. He had discovered more information that she thought she had. “You’re good at extracting information,” she said.

  Detective MacKay was also inching toward the door. “Thank you, Miss Merrick,” he said. “I’ll be in touch later today.”

  She watched him leave with the police artist.

  The second detective looked at her with interest. “My wife is a big admirer of yours,” he said. “So am I.”

  That surprised her. She hadn’t imagined a burly homicide detective would have an interest in figure skating. “Thank you,” she said.

  “My wife, she loves figure skating,” he continued. “It sorta grew on me, too. And our kid.”

  Just then, the door opened and her mother and Paul entered, eyeing the detective warily.

  “I’ll be outside,” the detective said.

  She wanted to ask him to stay, but this, she knew, was something she had to do alone.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The two waited until the door closed.

  “We talked to your doctor,” her mother said. “He said there’s no reason you can’t leave today. And you can start skating in several days.”

  “We still have the plane on standby,” Paul added. “And now that you’ve talked to that police artist, you’ve done everything you can do.”

  “Not exactly,” she said.

  They both stared at her as if she’d grown two heads.

  “I might remember more,” she said lamely. She wasn’t ready to tell them she’d offered herself as bait for a trap.

  “You probably won’t,” Paul said sensibly. “If you do, you can contact them from Seattle.”

  “I’m just not ready yet,” she said. “There are more questions…”

  “We’ve lost days,” Paul said patiently. “We need practice.”

  “You go ahead,” she said. “You and Mom. You can start practicing. I’ll be there in two or three days. I promise to be there for the competition.”

  “If you insist on staying,” Paul said, “I’ll stay. We can practice here.”

  “You said it would be several days before I can skate,” she said. “You need the time to get accustomed to the rink. And Mother needs to be there for publicity and to scout the competition. You two and David can make adjustments in the routine. And make sure the costumes are ready.” There was a different set of costumes for the Sectional. And a new program. It would have some of the elements they were perfecting here in Atlanta, but changes were always made.

  “I’m not sure…”

  Her mother was not often unsure of anything, but she was weakening. The costumes were her pride and joy. She’d designed them for the past six years.

  “The detectives can’t properly protect me if they have to watch out for all of us,” Marise said. “Doing it this way will get me to Seattle much faster.”

  “I don’t like it. You shouldn’t be alone,” her mother countered.

  “I won’t be alone,” she said patiently. “I will be surrounded by the entire police department.”

  “The publicity…”

  “You can tell them I decided to stay and recuperate here,” she said. “Just think how bad the publicity would be if someone tracked me to Seattle and killed me.” She regretted the words almost immediately, when tears formed in her mother’s eyes. She went over to her and took her hands in her own. “I couldn’t be safer,” she said. “This really is for the best.”

  “I want to stay here with you,” her mother said stubbornly.

  Marise was surprised. She knew her mother well, and usually knew how to assuage her. “I need to do this, and I need to do it alone. I can’t help the police if I’m worrying about you.”

  Paul looked rebellious, then resigned. “You’re determined?”

  “Yes.”

  Her mother looked horrified. “Paul?”

  He shook his head. “If I’ve learned anything about Mare, it’s that when she makes up her mind, we might as well do as she wants.” He gave her a small grin. “She doesn’t do it often, but I’ve learned to heed her when she does.”

  He looked back at Cara Merrick. “And I don’t like the idea of her living in terror for the rest of her life.” He turned to Marise. “When will you join us in Seattle?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “A few days. No later than the middle of next week.” She knew that was pushing it. But she could do their skating program in her sleep. Two weeks of practice should be sufficient. She was fully aware how important the Sectional was to Paul, and she would never, never ruin his chances.

  “You’ll try to make it sooner?” he asked.

  “Yes. I won’t let you down.”

  He hesitated, then took her hand. “You never did answer me. The question I asked…before all this happened.”

  She hesitated, then said, “Too much has happened in the past two days,” she said. “I…can’t make a decision now.”

  But she had. And from the disappointed look in his eyes, he suspected it.

  He said nothing. “We’ll stay with you until that detective returns and we know exactly what he plans to do,” he said. “We can stay at the hotel tonight and fly to Seattle in the morning.”

  “You chartered the plane fo
r this afternoon,” she reminded him.

  “We can cancel that.”

  She nodded. She couldn’t deny them that.

  Her mother tried once more. “I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you, after all…”

  The familiar guilt surged through Marise again. But this time she wasn’t going to let it guide her. “Nothing is going to happen to me.”

  Despite Paul’s seeming acquiescence, she knew they hadn’t given up. They were just going to give her time to reconsider on her own. She would surely see sense. She always did.

  But she wouldn’t. Not this time. It was too important. Not only for her, but for others.

  And MacKay would make sure she was safe.

  She felt a rising excitement—and fear—as she thought of the days ahead. Perhaps, at last, she would have some influence on her own destiny.

  Chapter 4

  Cassidy paced restlessly, fielding questions from his boss as to manpower, risk and chances of success—with and without the figure skater.

  “You sure she’s willing to go through with this?” Captain Haynes asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you can protect her?”

  “I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t believe I could.”

  “There’s no other way?”

  “She just didn’t see enough,” Cassidy said. “I’m pretty sure it’s someone connected to the hospital, but it could be one of their employees, ex-employees, people who go there often—med techs, police, ambulance drivers, even linen-truck drivers. That includes thousands of people.”

  “Then, who do we get to protect her?”

  “People I know,” Cassidy said. “I want to pick my team.”

  “How long?”

  “She has to leave next week.”

  “And you feel the perp might go after her?”

  “He took a tremendous chance in going to her room last night. There could have been cops inside. Hell, there should have been.”

  “Maybe he had a cover story in case someone questioned him.”

  Cassidy frowned. “I’m sure he did. He’s clever as hell. And if we don’t get him now, he’ll probably go underground for a while. What really worries me is that he might follow Marise Merrick to Seattle.”

  “If we set a trap using her, and anything goes wrong, you know what will happen. We’ll both be busted to the streets—if not thrown off the force.”

  Cassidy nodded.

  “I’ll take this upstairs and give you an answer this afternoon. In the meantime, I would suggest you clean up. Get a few hours’ sleep. Someone with her now?”

  “Two uniforms. And Manny.”

  “What about your other cases?”

  “They can wait for a few days.”

  “Give them to Malcolm and Perry.”

  Cassidy nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Just make it work.”

  Cassidy grabbed a couple of hours’ sleep, then washed and shaved. The phone rang. It was Manny.

  “She’s being released,” he said.

  “I think we’ll get the go-ahead. The captain signed off on it. Stick with her. Make sure there’s a uniform as well. Check their badge numbers with headquarters.”

  “You don’t think…”

  “I don’t think anything at the moment. I just don’t want to take any chances. Call me when you have the hotel and room number. Drive them over in your car.”

  “My car isn’t very elegant.”

  “Just do it.”

  She was smaller and even shorter than he’d thought as she’d padded across the hotel suite barefoot, wearing a track suit. She had such a presence about her that he’d thought she would be taller. Five-three, he remembered her telling the artist. But it hadn’t really registered.

  At six feet, he towered over her.

  The bandage was gone. Her blond hair was damp and pulled back into a ponytail. She looked sixteen. She’s twenty-four. Nearly twenty-five, he told himself. He’d brought up the statistics on his computer. He’d wanted to know everything there was to know about her before taking that last step.

  She was even prettier with a touch of lipstick and blush on her cheeks. Her blue eyes looked even more enormous and expressive.

  She hadn’t opened the door. Manny had instructed them well. Paul Richards had opened it and stood aside. They had a small suite in a hotel near the auditorium where the competition had taken place.

  Cassidy wondered whether Paul stayed in the same room, then told himself her sleeping arrangements were none of his business.

  “I can’t talk either of you out of this, can I?” Paul Richards asked. He looked so miserable that Cassidy revised his original opinion of the man. He obviously did care about his partner.

  “She can say no at any time.”

  “She won’t. She’s set on this dangerous course. But you can stop it. You can refuse to go on with this plan.”

  “If I thought she wouldn’t be in any more danger, I would,” he said. “But if we don’t catch him, he could follow you.” He hesitated, then added, “We’ll take every precaution.”

  “She wants to help everyone,” Richards said. “Sometimes I even think she hates to win because someone else has to lose.”

  Cassidy allowed that idea to sink in. A softhearted skater who could disable a bulky rapist. She was a far more complicated person than he’d first suspected.

  Birthday: October 3O, 1977. College: B.A. degree mostly by correspondence courses. Major, English. Birthplace: San Diego, California.

  The degree had encouraged him. That must have been difficult to obtain while staying on the road most of the year. She had determination as well as quick wits and an ability to defend herself.

  “Where will I stay?” she said.

  “With me,” he said.

  Paul Richards started to say something.

  “Don’t worry,” Cassidy broke in. “There will be plenty of chaperones. I live in a neighborhood of cops. At least two will be with her at all times, and there will be plenty of help within hollering distance.”

  Richards stared at him for a long time, clearly trying to establish his possession.

  Then Cara Merrick came into the room, her eyes red and her cheeks splotched with tears.

  Cassidy looked at Marise Merrick. “You can still change your mind. No one would ever question it.”

  “I’ve made up my mind, Detective. Where do we go from here?”

  He looked at Mrs. Merrick in question.

  “We are leaving in the morning for Seattle,” she said. “I’ll find a place for us for the next three weeks.” Then she stiffened and her eyes became steely. Formidable. “Take care of her.”

  “She’s just going to be looking over photos,” he said. He didn’t like his own guilt at telling a half-truth. This was a really lousy idea.

  He looked back to Marise. “Manny or I will be here, along with two uniformed officers. I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

  He looked around the suite. “Are there any other doors?”

  “Only a connecting door to Paul’s room,” Marise said.

  Well, that answered one question.

  “And the only door from his room is into the hall?”

  Richards nodded.

  “I’ll leave you, then,” Cassidy said. “Manny or I will be outside. If you want any food, we will get it for you.”

  He started to leave, then hesitated. “A reporter knows about the attack. Probably from someone at the hospital. We couldn’t stop it.”

  “I know,” Mrs. Merrick said. “One reporter found us. We asked the desk not to put through any calls.”

  “There will probably be television trucks as soon as the story breaks.”

  “Maybe I should go with you now,” Marise said.

  “You’ll be safer here,” he said. “I want to make sure everything is set.” Mainly he had to make sure his house was at least habitable. He was the epitome of the world’s view of a sloppy bachelor. What was really bad was that he wa
s in the process of remodeling the house that he’d bought cheap because it was in such bad shape.

  It was still the safest place for her, though.

  He also needed final departmental approval before he took her anyplace.

  “I’ll make sure that no reporters get up here,” he said. “I’ll tell the switchboard to allow my calls to go through, so if the phone does ring, pick it up.” He knew he sounded curt and officious, but he was also feeling an unusual sense of guilt and indecision that he didn’t like at all.

  He also didn’t like the look of trust in Marise Merrick’s blue eyes.

  “I’ll be here in the morning,” he said. “Eight.”

  He left before he had any additional doubts.

  Marise met him at the door the next morning. Her mother and Paul were tight-lipped but silent.

  She gave them both a hug, then handed Cassidy her bag. There wasn’t much in it. A couple of track suits, a pair of slacks, a pair of jeans, a couple of blouses, a night shirt and robe. A pair of shoes in addition to the running shoes she was wearing now along with a shirt and slacks she was wearing. That was it. Her costumes would go with Paul and her mother.

  She hoped she didn’t look as red-eyed as she felt. She’d gotten precious little sleep last night. She’d feared the nightmare would return and that if she woke her mother, there would be yet another battle to fight and more tears to stem.

  Her head still ached slightly, and she had enough bruises to make moving uncomfortable. Most of all, she wondered whether she was doing the right thing. She and Paul did need practice time. Was she destroying his career because she didn’t care enough about her own?

  Was this…idea simply a way to break away from an increasingly uncomfortable life, one that no longer satisfied her? Was it a selfish adventure that could destroy the hopes of people she cared about?

  She only knew that despite the danger she was not foolish enough to ignore, she looked forward to a few days of freedom, away from routine and discipline and the feeling of being trapped.

  Or was she just running into another kind of prison?

  She was attracted to Cassidy MacKay. He was so different from any man she’d ever met. He exuded competence, and yet there was no arrogance about him, none of the constant anxiety that ran among many skaters.