Doctor Lucky Charms: A Holiday Romance (Kilts and Kisses) Read online

  I scolded myself as I hurried out of there, wishing I’d listened to James and gone home. My apartment was safe – you needed a keycard to get in and there was a front desk guy working until midnight every night.

  It wasn’t long before I was in the office parking garage. It was nearly empty, like the rest of the office. Rain came down hard, almost loudly enough to cover the sound of my footsteps, and I couldn’t help but notice the sense that I was being watched.

  The back of my neck tingled, my ears burning. I stopped halfway to my car, turning around and looking for anyone else who might’ve been in the garage. I didn’t see a soul as I scanned my surroundings, my eyes jumping from place to place.

  It was eerie.

  Just get to your car. Get to your car and get out of here. Thirty minutes from now you’ll be home, nice and cozy wrapped up in a blanket with the rain coming down, a big plate of veal parm and cheesy bread in front of you and the worst reality TV you can find on Netflix on the TV. But first, you have to get to your car.

  By the time my internal monologue was finished I felt a bit better, but I wasn’t about to take any chances. I reached into my bag and slipped out the small container of mace I carried with me, flicking the cap open and holding it ready to use.

  I hurried over to my car as fast as my little legs would take me. My eyes stayed locked on my Silver Kia, my heart racing as I drew closer and closer. My car was parked among the few other vehicles on that garage floor, a big white van next to me.

  Moments later I reached my car, letting out a sigh of frustration as I saw that the white van was parked close enough that I had I turn my body to squeeze through.

  Holy crap – who the hell parks this close to someone else? Good thing I’m barely five feet and a few inches in heels.

  I made my way through, the passage so narrow that I could see the splotches of rust and the caked-on dirt on the side of the van.

  Everything took place so fast. The van door opened and all I saw were narrowed eyes and a grinning mouth of dirty teeth, then a tattooed hand shooting out to grab my throat. I gasped, my eyes going wide as the man, whoever he was, shoved me against my car, squeezing my throat hard enough that I could barely breathe.

  I tried to scream but couldn’t. The man’s face was hidden behind a ski mask, only three holes cut out to reveal his dark eyes and sneering mouth. I struggled, but it did me no good. The man, whoever he was, had me right where he wanted me.

  I wasn’t about to let him win so easily. I pulled my mace out of my bag and brought it up to his face. He was too quick for me, however. With his free hand he grabbed my wrist and twisted it so the spray of mace landed in a wet curve against the back of the driver-side seat. One quick shake of my wrist and the mace fell out, landing on the ground of the van with a soft, metallic thunk.

  “Not a smart move, Miss Lawyer.” His voice was heavily accented. In the heat of the moment, I couldn’t tell exactly where he was from, but it sounded like Mexico.

  He held me like that for several seconds that felt like an eternity. My heart pounded in my chest and part of me was certain that it was the end. I was so close to the man that I could smell the disgusting, stale scent of cigars on his breath mixed with the sharp tang of sweat emanating off his body and dirty clothes.

  “Now, Miss McCallister, I’m going to make this very quick. You’ve made some enemies among my friends.”

  There was no doubt in my mind who the man was referring to.

  “Good,” I shot out. “If I’m…if I’m…,” with his hand on my throat it was hard to get out the words. But I said them anyway, “if I’m making enemies with people like you, that means I’m doing my job.”

  He grinned, and part of me couldn’t believe that I’d said what I had. People had always told me I was too willful for my own good.

  The man squeezed my throat hard, making breathing more difficult than it already was. I tried to scream and speak, nothing but dry chokes coming out.

  “Very cute,” he said. “But I’m going to tell you this very simply. If you’re interested in staying alive, you will stop taking cases like the one you had today. Maybe instead you work with neighbors arguing about branches going into their lawns – nice and safe stuff like that. Do you understand?”

  His voice was accented, but his English was perfect.

  I said nothing, instead narrowing my eyes and wishing I could tell him to screw off.

  “I said, do you understand?”

  It was clear I wouldn’t be getting out of his grasp without agreeing.

  I nodded and he dropped me. I fell back against my car, taking deep breath after deep breath.

  He stepped back into his van, standing over me and looking down with those horrible, dark eyes.

  “If you’re smart, this is the last time we’ll see one another. But that all depends on you, Miss McCallister. I hope you do the intelligent thing.”

  Without another word, he pulled the sliding door of the van shut. Moments later, the engine grumbled to life, the vehicle pulling back out of the spot and driving off. Still, gasping for breath, my throat throbbing with pain, I turned to watch the van as it drove away. There were no plates, and all identifying marks that would show make or model had been pulled off.

  I sat there on the cold pavement for several minutes, catching my breath and trying to come to terms with what had just happened. As I did, I became certain that this cartel business that I’d gotten myself mixed up in wasn’t a game anymore – it was a matter of life and death.

  Chapter 2

  JOANN

  “Ow, ow.” My hand went to my throat as I sipped my coffee, the mere act of sipping and swallowing enough to cause me pain. I set down my mug and picked up the remote to turn down the episode of Drag Race I had playing in the background.

  The pain was nothing more than a dull ache, but that didn’t matter. Every time I felt it, I was taken back to last night, the terror I’d felt while that man, whoever he was, held me by the neck, his calloused fingers rubbing raw against my skin.

  He’d literally had my life in his hands. A harder squeeze or a quick twist and I’d have been done. I’d heard enough stories from my coroner sister Jolene to know just how easy it was for a life to be taken.

  I was grateful as hell that it was Saturday. That meant I’d have time to process what the hell had happened last night. More importantly, I had time to let the bruises on my neck heal. I hurried into the bathroom and took a look. I’d done a halfway decent job of covering them with makeup, but the purple, finger-print-sized smudges were still there underneath.

  Should be mostly gone by Monday, I thought as I turned off the bathroom light and went back into the main room of my downtown Denver condo. My stomach grumbled and I went over to the fridge in response, opening the door and spotting my untouched takeout from last night, the veal parm and cheesy garlic bread still in the plastic bag and tin takeout containers they’d come in.

  I barely even remembered picking the food up. After the incident I’d been on auto pilot, driving with a blank expression on my face to Fusilli’s, the time in the restaurant a blur. Then I’d been back in my car and on my way home, feeling like I was in some kind of a strange daze. I’d stepped into my condo, put my food into the fridge. After that, I’d gone to the bedroom, slipped out of my clothes, and gone to bed.

  I couldn’t remember a thought I’d held in my head last night. But when I’d woken up in that morning, opening my window to the dreary, gray sky outside, it began to dawn on me.

  A chime sounded through my apartment as I forced down another sip of coffee – it was the front desk letting me know I had a guest. I hopped off the couch and hurried over to the speaker, pressing the button.

  “You sister and niece,” spoke the woman working the front desk.

  I wracked my brain trying to remember if she’d told me she’d be coming by. She and Sawyer lived in the city but also kept a house in Whitepeak, our hometown an hour or so west of Denver. They liked to zip back
and forth between here and there, and I always had a hard time keeping track of where they were.

  “Oh, great!” I said with my finger on the “talk” button. “They’re OK to come up.”

  I spent the next few minutes hurrying around my apartment, putting things away and trying to make the place a little more presentable. My place, was already pretty clean – my tidying was really more about handling the nerves that were left over from last night.

  A quick rap sounded at the door, and I hurried to the bathroom one more time to get a look at the bruises on my neck. I briefly considered applying a bit more coverup, but I didn’t have time for that.

  I rushed over to the front door and pulled it open, my sister Jolene already in the middle of an excited scream at seeing me.

  “Good morning!” she shouted, zipping over and throwing her long, slender arms around my body and pulling me into a tight hug.

  “Morning!” I was barely able to get the word out. As much as I wished it weren’t the case, having someone hold me tight was enough to make me flash back to last night.

  Jolene, tall and gorgeous with auburn hair that she kept in a ponytail, stepped back and regarded me with a curious expression. She was dressed in a dark blue cashmere sweater, dark jeans, and a Burberry trench coat on over top of that. Sometimes it was hard to tell that she and I were sisters – Jolene was tall and lean and fair-skinned, just like our mom. I, on the other hand, had dad’s athletic build and olive-skin.

  Five-year-old Charlotte, who everyone called Charlie, was at her mom’s side with a big, adorable smile on her face. She took after her mom through and through, with milk-white skin and sparkling eyes.

  “Aunt Jo-Jo!” the words burst out of her mouth as she stuck out her adorably short little arms up for a hug – I was happy to oblige.

  “Good to see you, Chuck!” I said, referring to her with my nickname’s-nickname.

  She squeezed me tightly and I let her go. Tucked under her arm was a small stack of coloring books.

  “Where’s Georgie?” I asked, referring to her twin sister Georgia.

  “She’s with daddy in Whitepeak,” she said.

  “We decided to come to the city for a girl’s day,” Jolene said. “Celebrating them getting through the first couple of months of kindergarten, you know?”

  I stepped aside and let them both in, shutting the door behind them as they slipped out of their coats. As they entered, I noticed that Jolene had brought two things with her. The first was a paper bag, the other was a manilla envelope.

  “I can’t help but notice that you looked really surprised to see us. I texted you an hour ago – did you not get it?”

  As soon as she said the words, I realized that I hadn’t checked my phone once since waking up that morning.

  “Um, I guess I haven’t.”

  Another curious looked from my sister. “Well, I was messaging to tell you that I was planning on coming by with some bagels from Moe’s. But that in exchange, you’d handle the coffee situation. She glanced over toward my kitchen over the bar that separated the kitchen from the main living room. “And it’s not looking like you handled that.”

  As she spoke, an argument on the TV broke out between two of the contestants. The volume was pretty low, but the back and forth between the two of them caused my stomach to tighten with tension. Without thinking, and without a word to Jolene, I hurried over, grabbed the remote from the coffee table, then turned the TV off.

  Once that was done, I dropped the remote onto the couch at stared at the black screen, gazing at my reflection.

  “Are you OK?” Jolene asked. She set the bag of bagels on the bar and came over to me, putting her hand on my shoulder. “You seem…off.”

  “Aunt JoJo,” Charlie, who was int the process of making her way around the couch to come talk to me, said. “What happened to your neck? There’s purple stuff on it.”

  Shit. Jolene craned her neck to look at the bruises and I knew there was no chance of getting out of telling her what had gone down last night.

  “It’s a new makeup I’m trying out,” I said. I hated to lie to Charlie. But in the moment, I figured that the truth might be a little much to explain to a five-year-old.

  “Oh.”

  Jolene didn’t appear to want to drop it so easily.

  “Charlie, why don’t you go sit at the bar and work on your coloring books, OK?”

  “Can I have a bagel, too?”

  “Sure, sure. Aunt Jo-Jo and I will get that while you color.”

  Jolene flashed her eyes at me, then nodded toward the kitchen. Once there, I turned on the Sonos to play a little music in order to drown out the conversation while Charlie colored.

  “OK,” my sister said. “I saw those marks when I came in – what happened?”

  I started the coffee, trying to figure out where to begin.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the manilla folder that she still had tucked under her arm.

  She slipped the folder out and held it up. “Part of the reason why I wanted to see you today. But first, I want to know what happened.”

  I sighed and went into it. As I spoke, telling her the story of Ricky and the Escarra cartel and the attack in the parking garage, I continually glanced over to Charlie, making sure she wasn’t listening in. Jolene listened with wide eyes as we sipped our coffee and I filled her in on the details.

  When I was done, she closed her eyes and raised a palm. “Please, pretty please, tell me you went to the cops.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “And why not? You were attacked, Joann.” She said the word “attacked” in a low, careful tone. “And now that guy’s just running around in the city!”

  I shook my head and leaned back against the counter, my hands wrapped around my mug, the steam rising in front of me. I glanced over to the rectangular, picture window over the sink, the sky still gray and small splashes of rain forming on the glass.

  “It all happened so fast,” I said. “I know that sounds like a cliché, but it’s true. It was over in a flash and when I finally kind of came to my senses, I looked at the van and it had zero ways to identify it – no tags, no plates, nothing.”

  “There’s got to be a security camera there or something – some way to find out who he was.”

  “We were sandwiched between my car and his. Looking back, he must’ve done it like that so no cameras there could spot us.”

  Jolene sighed, running her hand through her hair. “I’m sorry if I’m coming down on you hard but you have to see my angle – I want this guy behind bars!”

  “I know, I know. It’s just that I’ve been in a total daze, and I likely still would be if you and Charlie hadn’t shown up.”

  Charlie, hearing her name, looked up from her coloring to smile at us before turning her attention back to her work.

  “Well, I’m here to snap you out of it. At the very least, call the police and file a report just so it’s on record.”

  “Yeah, you’re right about that. I should know better as a lawyer, you know?” My eyes went to her folder once more. “I still need to wrap my head around all this. Tell me what that’s all about and I’ll call after.”

  She pursed her lips into a flat line, as if not sure she wanted to let me off the hook so easily.

  “OK, but only because it’s so important. But you promise me you’ll file the report after?”

  “Pinkie promise,” I said, sticking out the finger in question.

  She shook her head one more time, and I could tell she had something more to say about the subject.

  “I know you love this job of yours,” she said. “Believe me – I’ve got a job I’m crazy about too. But you’re really in it, you know? You’re putting cartel members away and getting threatened and making powerful enemies in the process.”

  “Comes with the territory, big sister.”

  “I get it, I do. And I’m not asking you to stop doing it. Just thinking…maybe you ought to take a break? Go on a sa
bbatical or something?”

  “A sabbatical? Come on, you’re talking like I’m some celebrity who made an embarrassing tweet and needs to hide out for a few months.”

  “And you’re downplaying it,” she replied. “You were assaulted last night, if you don’t at least give yourself some time to process it, you’re going to end up with some serious trauma.”

  She raised her palm, as if stopping herself.

  “Sorry. I’ve made my stance on the matter more than clear.”

  I allowed myself a small smile as I set down my mug, stepped over, then quickly yanked the folder from her hands.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “What’s the big idea?”

  I hurried over to the other end of the kitchen and opened up the folder. “Starting to get the impression I need to be a little proactive, otherwise I’ll never know what’s in here.”

  Jolene sighed. “Fine, fine – it’s legal stuff so you’re going to need to see it yourself anyway.”

  “’Legal stuff’?” I flashed her a confused look as I opened the enveloped and reached in to take out the contents. Sure enough, there was a stack of papers inside, the legalese dense and thick.

  “You remember Grandma Mary’s house in Ireland?” she asked. “The one near Dublin?”

  “Are you kidding?” I asked as I ran my eyes over the forms. “We spent, like, three summers there back when we were kids. Not to mention the little fact that she left it to us when she passed.”

  “I know. But it’s all the way over on the other side of Atlantic – easy to forget about it, especially when we’re paying people to take care of it.”

  She was right about that. Already we were having the longest conversation we’d had on the subject since Grandma Mary had passed over ten years ago, when we’d decided we’d pay for some local caretakers to keep it in decent shape until we figured out what to do with it.

  It clicked what the papers were about. I looked up at Jolene, totally shocked.

  “Wait, this is a letter from a development company? And they want to buy it?”

  “Look at what they’re offering,” she said, nodding toward me. “It’s on the last page.”