She hated that he’d just assumed she’d be here when he showed up last night, as if she had no personal life. Odds were nil she’d do the nasty with a stranger, named Jeff or otherwise, but damn. A woman had her pride and he had no right to assume her sex life was dull as dishwater. That was Cynthia’s sad little secret. She wasn’t even sure he was listening, because he seemed fascinated by her hair, his anger expanding his chest and widening his eyes.
On a sharp exhale, he said, “Your head is bleeding.”
“Huh?” She pressed her palm to the top of her head, instinctively trying to hide the evidence, which was stupid. No hiding that she’d been roughed up.
He finally met her gaze, and looked ready to explode. “Are you telling me Jeff did this to you? You had sex with a ‘Jeff,’ who did this to you?” Shock nudged aside irritation, and now that she thought on it, it wasn’t unreasonable for Charlie to draw that horrible conclusion from her hypothetical social life with the nonexistent Jeff.
“No.” She bit her lip, recoiling from the thought. There it was again: guilt, guilt, guilt. There seemed to be guilt connected with every damn interaction they’d had lately. “No, Charlie. I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.” Yada yada yada. Her head hurt. She didn’t have any more energy to wade through another emotional quagmire. When would she learn to just shut her mouth?
“So Jeff,” he said, allowing his words to hang as he waited for more information.
Cynthia waved him off. “Doesn’t exist. Forget it.” Flushed, she felt stupid now that her Jeff example had blown up, especially since it seemed like a clinical example of a blatant cry for attention. Almost as if she’d wanted to make Charlie jealous. She peeked at him from behind a lock of hair hanging over her right eye, wondering if he was…but that would be insane, because they were just friends. She wanted to change the subject. Not easy, under the pall of Charlie’s dark frowns and him looming over her, making it hard to think.
Especially since the last time they’d talked, really talked, she’d been quite drunk on tequila and had kissed him: a full-throttle, moan-inducing, tongue-thrusting, hips-grinding kiss. Just thinking about it mortified her. Well, not the kiss so much as what had happened afterward. The damn man pushed her away, and the kiss had gotten off to such a great start, too. Hot. Sexy. Bone-meltingly arousing. She could tell he’d liked it, too, because when her hips ground against his rock-hard erection, he’d moaned, too. It was the sexiest, most arousing sound she’d ever heard in her life. Then he rejected her.
Rejected her kiss, and more importantly, rejected everything the kiss would have preceded. She’d been drunk, so she’d respected his integrity and everything, but Cynthia’s pride still stung. And despite all attempts to avoid him since, Charlie kept pushing, pushing, and pushing past every roadblock she’d erected between them. The guy refused to give her privacy to lick her wounds and move past his rejection, and insisted on hovering, worrying, trying to gentle them back into the comfortable “friendship” they’d enjoyed since the accident.
But she wasn’t ready. Every time she looked at him, she remembered how she’d revealed herself. She’d been emotionally naked, and he’d pushed her away. How did a woman move past something like that? She didn’t.
Cynthia went so far as to decline invitations to his parents’ house to protect her pride. Even that backfired. Delia and Paul Foulkes, his parents, kept sending Charlie to her house, demanding to know why she was avoiding everyone with the last name of Foulkes. Well, Charlie knew. Actions had consequences. Rejecting her kisses had consequences. And the man had to learn.
“What do you want, Charlie?” His deep blue eyes bored into hers and narrowed, telling her he was irritated with her tone. Well, duh. That had been the point of her tone.
“You called me,” he said.
Charlie’s shirtsleeves strained as he adjusted his arms, folding them more firmly over his chest, making his biceps pop. His thigh muscles stretched the fabric of his jeans also, and his waistband rode low on his hips, revealing a strip of muscled lower abdomen, that tasty bit of belly that separated the “six-pack” from “the package.” Cynthia loved that strip.
Charlie was large, mere inches from being “too muscular,” though she’d yet to hear a woman complain. No, women didn’t complain about Charlie, but they talked. Lots of talk. If Cynthia had to hear one more woman at the precinct swoon over the sexy Boston Police Department forensic pathologist, Cynthia was going to spit, because she knew any one of them had more of a shot with Charlie than she did.
“I called you?” When Cynthia found her cell in her car, it had been predictably dead.
“Last night.” He stepped close, his boots between her shoes, trapping her on the couch, forcing her knees to widen or risk touching his legs with her inner thighs. A glance told her he was examining her for damage, noting every tear in her suit, every smudge on her face. “What’s with the blood?” He pulled her head forward and none too gently examined her laceration.
“Hey!” Cynthia slapped at his hands, but he easily maintained control of her head, poking at her scalp.
“Stop it. Let me see,” he said. She felt him pick aside her blood-matted hair. “It’s not bleeding anymore, but you still might need a stitch or two to help it heal correctly.” He palpated the rest of her scalp, then drew his warm fingers down her neck and checked her pulse with one hand as his other moved to her shoulder, stopping her from squirming. His touch felt like a caress, and his nearness made her feel all weak inside, and vulnerable. “You hurt anywhere else?” He lifted her hands, his touch gentle, almost reverent, as he studied them. She leaned back in the couch, needing to put distance between them. He was making her feel things she didn’t want to feel.
“What are you doing?” she said, loving how his strong hands enveloped hers.
“You look like you had one hell of a brawl last night, but I see no knuckle abrasions or bruising, so what happened?”
She had no idea. Not fully, anyway.
Cynthia pulled her hands from his strong grip. “I…I’m fine.”
“You’re clearly not.” He walked away, leaving the room, and it felt like a reprieve. From Charlie’s alarmed expression, she feared her head laceration was worse than she’d supposed. He returned moments later, a bag of frozen peas in hand. When he pressed it to her head, her pain spiked, taking her breath away. She gasped, batting at him.
“Hold still.” He took her hand and pressed it to the frozen bag before releasing it. “Keep that in place. The cut can’t be stitched if the wound is too swollen.” Head bent, she stared at his boots, focusing on the sensation of the cold bag against her overheated hand.
“Stop treating me like a child.” The bag slipped from her grip, forcing her to use both hands to adjust it back in place. “I’m all grown.” He sat next to her, doing the whole “manspread” thing, and the heat of his thigh pressed against hers made it hard to concentrate, especially since she suspected her stringy, matted hair, and hunched back from holding the bag to her wound, made her look like a crone.
“I’ve noticed.” His smile confused the hell out of her, until he raised his brows suggestively. Her heart curdled with embarrassment. Leave it to Charlie to think now was a good time to talk about the-kiss-that-shall-not-be-mentioned.
“Listen, Romeo.” She swatted his thigh and scooted away from him on the couch. Cynthia didn’t do humiliation well, so she defaulted to anger. “Yes, I kissed you, it was a disaster—”
“A disaster?” His smile was kind, and playful. She would have preferred a swift kick.
“I’ve kissed loads of guys, and sometimes it’s good, and sometimes, yes, it’s a disaster, but not one of them acted—months later—as if the sky was falling.”
His cheek kicked up. “It sure felt like the sky was falling. Or maybe that was the earth moving.”
“Stop.” They both knew he’d rejected her. Why was he acting as
if he hadn’t? “I don’t appreciate you embarrassing me.”
“I’m not.” His eyes widened as he shook his head.
“Yes, you are! Can you just leave it alone? The kiss was a mistake. I didn’t like it either—”
“You didn’t like it?” His brows lifted again, skeptically this time.
“No, I didn’t, and please do us both a favor and pretend it never happened. I had too much tequila. We both know what happens when I drink tequila.”
“We’ve drunk plenty of tequila and you’ve never stuck your tongue down my throat before.”
“But—” He had her there, and as she struggled to piece together a suitable comeback, she found herself studying his features. He was enjoying himself, and here she was injured, bleeding, for heaven’s sake, and he was torturing her.
“Yes?” he prompted, giving her his complete attention.
“As I said, I didn’t like it. So…just stop, will you?”
He sighed, and then finally averted his intense stare, only to give her the side eye. “One disastrous kiss shouldn’t ruin a friendship.”
The very idea was ludicrous on both counts. “I never said that!”
“We kiss. You think it’s a disaster, and then you avoid me like the plague. If I were a better kisser, would you still have cut me and my parents off?”
“I didn’t.” A bald-faced lie. She did. She really did.
“And I’ll have you know, plenty of women think I’m a good kisser.”
Plenty? She didn’t want to think about it. Struggling to say the right thing and keep her pride, she floundered. “I’m sure you’re a good kisser with…well, with someone else. Or…I don’t know.” Who was she kidding? Their kiss had been fabulous, and try as she might, she couldn’t get it out of her head. “It’s just—” His eyes narrowed and Cynthia gave up, groaning as she leaned her head back on the couch, squeezing her eyes shut.
“What? Talk to me.” He took her hand and gave it a squeeze.
She’d kissed him. Took a chance, and now it was time to suffer the consequences. She’d earned this comeuppance, and it was only right that she take it like a…well, a woman.
“Go ahead. Have at it,” she said, allowing her head to loll to the side so she was forced to see the male arrogance on his face as he declared his superiority. For Charlie didn’t want Cynthia as she wanted him, and that put her at a disadvantage. They both knew it. “Say what you will.” Only she didn’t see male arrogance radiating off him. She saw kindness.
“Okay.” Charlie tugged her to his side, and when she was comfortably enfolded in his embrace, he gave her a brotherly squeeze. “I’ve been worried since ten last night, after you called, and I’ve been checking police scanners ever since, fearing they’d find your body on the side of the road.”
Guilt, guilt, guilt. Her bottom lip pushed out. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember calling you.” His long silence, coupled with his body tensing, told Cynthia he was going to make a big deal out of this, and she wasn’t sure she had the energy to argue with him.
“Explain,” he said.
“I blacked out. What did I say on the call?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I answered, and the line went dead. When I hit redial, it went straight to voice mail. I called your landline. No answer. I called Benton, Gilroy, O’Grady—”
“Dammit!” She groaned. He’d called her supervisor, and her teammates, so they’d been worrying since last night, too. “Who didn’t you call? Now they’ll—”
His arm around her shoulders squeezed, making his embrace more restraint than comfort. “I was trying to track you down. I was worried. Tell me about this blackout you suffered.” His protective tendencies had been triggered, and Charlie had slipped into big brother mode. He’d spent the last ten years—even the year he’d been flat on his back after the accident—worrying, doing his best to be a big brother because of a misguided belief he could have stopped her brother from driving drunk and dying. Cynthia knew better. Everyone who had ever known her brother knew there was no controlling Terrance.
“I’m sorry.” Cynthia pressed the frozen bag to her head again, feeling the weight of those familiar words. Sorry she’d made him worry. Sorry he felt responsible for her, for Terrance’s death. Sorry. Guilt, guilt, guilt. Their tragic history linked them forever, and couldn’t be ignored, because it’d shaped their identities, and now their lives were a mutual tapestry of obligation. Pull one thread, risk unraveling it all.
Kissing Charlie had pulled a thread.
“I’m such an ass,” she whispered, and then pressed her face to his chest, resting there, finding comfort in the beat of his heart, so steady and strong. She couldn’t hold the frozen bag anymore. It was too cold, so she dropped it on the cushion next to her and warmed her hand against Charlie’s bare arm. “Why do you put up with me?”
It was a rhetorical question. They both knew why, but Cynthia felt it was important to ask once in a while, just on the off chance Charlie might start asking that question himself. He deserved to cut bait and live his life out from under the obligation of Cynthia, the little sister he never asked for.
“Who hurt you?” He picked up the bag, gently pressing it to her injury. “Where were you last night?” His scruffy chin abraded her forehead as his lower lip pressed against her skin. It felt like a kiss, but was simply his lips moving, asking questions.
“I don’t know. I mean, I know bits, but”—she shrugged—“not everything.”
“Tell me.” He didn’t bother hiding his worry.
“I told you,” she said. “I blacked out.”
“Last night,” he said, “Benton said you’d left work with plans to go to the gym. I called there first, and the front desk said you’d left around ten.” He gave her a little squeeze. “You called me at ten on the nose.” Cynthia pushed off his chest, digging into her pocket to access the flash drive. She held it up, showing him.
“Security footage placing me at a federal safe house in Chinatown at ten-thirty last night.” Charlie frowned as he took it from her hand. “I don’t remember leaving the gym, Charlie. Just a scattering of weird memories. Horrible memories.”
“What do you remember? Exactly.”
“A brick wall. Men on their knees, bags over their heads, tied. Screaming. Begging for their lives.”
“Bags?” His gaze lowered and lost focus as if she’d triggered a memory for him. Pulling her gun from its holster, she handed it to him. He sniffed the gun’s slide, studying it from all angles. “It’s been discharged,” he said.
“Recently.” They both knew that Cynthia would have cleaned it after practicing at the range. “I have to call Benton and tell him what’s happened.”
Charlie stood and lifted the television remote off a side table, then turned on the set. Local news appeared on the screen, broadcasting live. It was a media circus, and the station’s chyron spelled out, “The Chinatown Massacre.” Special Agents Benton, Gilroy, and Modena—three black-suited, white-shirted, black-tied FBI task force members—were on screen, working behind yellow crime scene tape against the backdrop of a brick building.
“Benton knows,” Charlie said. Cynthia’s heart pounded as she carefully stood, eyes focused on the screen.
“That’s the place…from last night!” She pivoted toward the living room entrance, where she’d dropped her pocketbook, and made quick work digging out her phone and plugging it into the wall charger. “They must have been calling—”
“Since an hour ago.” He stepped to her side. “Six dead. Executed, wrists zip tied, cloth bags on their heads, affixed by duct tape circling their necks.” He tilted his head toward the television screen. “Why didn’t you call it in last night? You called me at ten. Shots were reported around then. That’s a half hour unaccounted for, if the video recorded you entering the safe house at ten-thirty.”
“I know.” She bi
t her lower lip. “A half hour after the murders, on foot, blocks from the crime scene, holding a recently discharged weapon.”
“A half hour where you didn’t call for backup.” He spoke with slow, measured tones, but she understood the context. Why? Damned if she knew, but she understood her behavior looked sketchy as hell.
“My phone must have died.” She’d left it in the car, in her pocketbook. “I don’t know, Charlie, what more do you want me to say? I don’t know.” He tossed the remote on the couch and took her by the upper arms, forcing her to meet his gaze. Whatever he saw there had him pulling her close, holding on. Evidence shuffled in her head like a pack of cards until the facts lined up. Cynthia looked guilty as sin. He wasn’t saying it, but they were both thinking it. “I’m afraid,” she said. His fingers curled into her back as he more completely formed his body to surround hers, even resting his chin on the top of her head. He was her shield against the world.
“I’ve got you,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
She believed him. Cynthia had a target on her back, so Charlie would protect her. It made her feel safer, but it was no comfort. Instead, it just filled her with guilt, guilt, guilt.
Chapter Two
Charlie held her close, hating how she trembled. They both knew she was in trouble. The only questions seemed to be: to what degree, and how could he help. Both he and Cynthia were supposed to be at the crime scene, although his instinct told him neither should be within a mile of it. Just showing up had the potential to taint an evidentiary hearing, thus creating liability for the District Attorney when it came time to prosecute. If Cynthia was the “unknown subject.” The unsub. Which she wasn’t, couldn’t be, but that didn’t mean a judge or jury of her peers would not see it otherwise.
“Why did you come to my house last night?” he said.
Cynthia tilted her chin back, meeting his gaze, but her grip remained strong, as if she feared he’d leave her. “Excuse me?”
Deadly Past Page 2