by Sarah Andre
Eventually he grunted, kissed each nipple, and slipped out of her. His smooth skin glistened, his eyes looked like the color of unlit coal. Their smiles were intimate and comfortable, and she sighed in utter bliss.
He staggered off his knees and collapsed beside her, his movements slow and weak. “I just might be too old for that position.” He grinned ruefully, rubbing kneecaps that still held scabs from the glass shards of her window.
“Sadly, even Olympic champions get old and weak,” she teased.
His slow blink held pure seduction. “Is that a double dog dare?”
“Maybe.”
“I have enough stamina to carry you into that bedroom and give you a workout you’ll never forget.”
He reached for her, and although her pulse drummed, she put up a hand.
“We’ve gotta get back to being the brainy PI assistant and hot murder suspect.”
“Soon.” He smoothed damp hair off her face. “Let’s go to the bedroom, Jo. I’ll get you to come again in five minutes flat. Time me.”
Every tingling corpuscle in her body begged her to agree. Their relationship was finally on solid footing. Another orgasm would only cement it further. After a prolonged struggle, her brain won out. “Is there any way you can reach your brother at the police station?”
His brows knotted. “He knows where we are.”
“I want to see how much longer he’ll be. We have to plan our strategy with Marcy, Wolf, and Vannini tomorrow. I want his input.”
“Aw, come on, Jo,” he groaned.
Inwardly, she absolutely melted at the hungry need in his eye. Outwardly, she smiled in regret and stroked his stubble. “Get dressed, horndog.”
He gazed at their clothing scattered everywhere. “Well,” he said, sounding resigned, “at least I got to order you around for a little while.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“The lieutenant said Leo left over half an hour an ago.” Lock disconnected the call. “He doesn’t have a cell phone, this one’s his.” His toes curled in the lush carpet, and he was vaguely aware that he was shirtless and exhausted, only now some instinct deep down began sounding alarms.
Jordan stood tentatively, wincing once, and pulled on her turtleneck. Her thick hair was mussed, and her rosy lips looked bee-stung, and it was all he could do not to sweep her into bed and make her scream in that throaty way all over again.
“Where should we look first?” she asked anxiously, and he pulled his thoughts back from the brink.
“He’s the most rational, capable, obsessive-compulsive you’ll ever meet. Wherever he is, he’s okay.”
She frowned, clearly not convinced, and her worry fed his. He walked over on legs that were still weak from the intensity of his orgasm and pulled her into his arms. Her forest scent became his oxygen, and he inhaled deeply.
“Could he have recognized the hit-and-run driver and paid him a visit?” she asked.
He smiled inwardly. There was no use cuddling a reporter on a mission. “Think, Jo.” He brushed a stray strand of her hair from her cheek. “He was face down on the sidewalk. I smashed his nose, remember?”
She disengaged herself, reaching for her boot just as Leo’s phone rang. They both exhaled in relief. He snatched it up.
“Leo?” The background noise was deafening.
“Yeah, I’m calling from the Avalanche. Hold on!”
Lock repeated the location to Jordan which cleared the last of her worry lines. Then the noise quieted somewhat, and his brother was back on.
“When I got done with the police I drove here to see if Vannini or Wolf were around.”
“Why didn’t you come and get us?”
“Based on that kiss in my car I figured you’d want to be alone for a while. I waited as long as I could to call.”
“I, uh, owe you,” was all Lock could think to reply. “Who’s there tonight?”
“Wolf. He said Vannini was in earlier, looked around nervously and left.”
A slow burn simmered. He glanced at Jordan, who flipped through Tiffany’s phone records. She frowned between those and her notes.
“Anything else?” he asked Leo.
“He said it was Marcy who gave Tiff that last Cosmo.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” He relayed the information to Jordan, whose eyebrows knit further.
“Marcy told me she’s never met Vannini,” she said.
“But why would she drug Tiff?” Lock asked both of them.
Jordan’s shark look was back. “I don’t know, but she said she never spoke to Tiffany again after you two left the bar. She went back to the office because the charity function had eaten into her day.” She held up a page. “But her number’s here on Tiffany’s cell phone records. Nine forty-three that night. Which makes Marcy the last person to have spoken to Tiffany.”
Lock dropped clumsily into a deep armchair. “Did you hear all that?” he asked his brother.
“Yeah. I don’t understand it, but I’ll head back and collect you guys.”
“Collect?”
“Dude. How do you not know what Jordan’s about to say?”
He glanced over in time to see her slap the pages together. “I don’t care what time it is, we’re visiting Marcy tonight.”
…
Jordan huddled against Lock’s warmth in the front seat, torn between her dogged desire to interview Marcy again and her wanton desire to hole up in bed with him.
“Did you tell the cops about Vannini?” he asked Leo as the three drove to Marcy’s a few blocks away.
“Nothing points to him as the hit-and-run driver. But I told them Prissy was seeing him.”
“I hope they picked the fucker up for questioning.”
“I didn’t see him there, and from a crime writer standpoint, everything we learned tonight from Prissy, Reeves, and Wolf is circumstantial. Even Parker will laugh if you bring him these threads.”
No one spoke the remaining blocks, and the drive was so quick, Jordan had no time to process why Marcy would drug her cousin or what kind of collaboration she had going with Vannini. Which one killed her, or had both?
She wished she could call Jefferson, but it was after two in the morning in Boston.
Her phone rang, and she fished it out of her pocket. Caller ID: Private.
“Let me talk to him,” Lock said through his teeth.
She sent the call to voicemail and pocketed the device. “We can’t get side-tracked. How much longer until we’re there?”
“That’s her house,” Lock said quietly, pulling to the curb and pointing two homes down. Jordan took in the large, stylish chalet with wide front windows. Lights blazed inside.
“She’s awake.” Her knees trembled. The woman on the phone hadn’t remotely resembled the woman she’d eavesdropped on in the restaurant, and neither personality was close to the dominating woman Lock described. Which Marcy would they encounter tonight?
Lock had his seatbelt off and the door half-open when he froze. “What the fuck?”
They caught the tail end of Vannini in the picture window, gesturing wildly. Within seconds he was striding back. It looked like he was yelling, hands still in motion in that Italian manner. A chill crept down her spine.
“Come on,” she whispered, “let’s go confront them.”
Lock remained deathly still, and she knew even before she looked over what he’d say.
“You do realize you’re staying in the car until I give the all clear.”
Jordan turned and beseeched Leo with a look.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m with Lock on this. Vannini being there is a game changer. One of them probably ran down Prissy tonight. We don’t know if they were aiming for us, and she was just collateral damage.”
“But there are two of them and three of us.”
“Stay with her,” Lock said quietly, shoving Leo’s cell phone in his pocket. “Tie her up if you have to.”
He slammed the door, and Jordan watched him stroll off toward the
warm, welcoming house that harbored two potential murderers.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jordan leaned against the station wagon, shivering, and compulsively dug her phone out of her pocket. The voicemail icon flashed; the messages left were all from her father. She blew an aggravated breath into the bitter night. Aw, hell, may as well skim through them—her anger might warm her up. If Lock hadn’t given the all clear by then, she’d go in after him. Them. With a stab of guilt she recalled Leo’s face as he capitulated to her pressure to go after his brother. Evened the odds, she’d reasoned.
She tapped the screen and held the phone to her ear, squinting for any activity in the lighted picture window. Nothing. Where were they?
You have…twenty-seven new messages, said the mechanical voice. First message, sent Tuesday, March seventeenth at ten thirty-four p.m.
“I told you to call me with your progress, girlie! Don’t try double crossin’ me, or I’ll make sure you rot in jail.” His words slurred together, but the threatening tone lashed at the little girl inside, who shrank in fear. She pressed delete. Tuesday she’d been unconscious in Leo’s cabin. That seemed so long ago now.
Second message, sent Wednesday, March eighteenth at eleven eleven a.m.
“My money’s gone already, and I froze my ass sleeping on a goddamn park bench. I was a hard-workin’ man ’til you ruined me…” She hit the delete icon again and hovered her thumb there as the next message started. She glanced at the empty picture window—where would four people have gone?—half listening to her father rant about what a good father he’d been and all he’d gotten was…Delete.
Fourth message, sent Wednesday, March eighteenth at five twenty-three p.m.
“Guess what, you stinking excuse for a daughter? I’m on my way to Boston. That’s right, I carjacked a Subaru, and I’m coming for—”
Goosebumps skittered over her skin as she hit the pound key to skip to the next message.
Fifth message, sent Thursday, March nineteenth at twelve sixteen a.m.
“Helloooooo. It’s your sweet, old daddy drivin’ on Interstate Twenty. Just made it through Georgia, so I won’t be long now! I can hardly wait to see that devious bitch of a wife. I’ll pay her back first for your double cross. I’ll pay her back good.”
Jordan listened in growing horror as message after message brought him up the coast toward Boston and the tiny three-bedroom apartment she shared with Rebecca and her mother. Oh God, they were both in so much danger, and they didn’t even know it!
Message twenty-seven, sent today at twelve thirty-four a.m. The call she ignored as they’d parked here.
“I’m outside your place, baby. It’s all dark.” He laughed tiredly. “Maybe you’re planning a surprise party for your daddy. You better be in there, or so help me God I’ll burn the place to the ground.”
Jordan spastically pressed her home number. She had to warn them first, then call the BPD. And Jefferson!
The home phone rang and rang. Her mother hated the shrillness of unanswered phones. Rebecca would have picked up long before now. Shit!
“Come on, Rebecca, pick up!”
Christ, he’d left that message fifteen minutes ago. Maybe he’d already torched the place. The phone was finally picked up, followed by muffled voices and her mother’s wails in the background.
“Hi, honey.” Her father’s menacing voice filled her ear. “I’m home.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Even from the back porch Lock heard the raised voices within, which helped conceal the sound of the door closing and his footsteps creeping across the kitchen.
He plastered himself against the wall, really the only space left to hide given the rest of Marcy’s downstairs was one enormous great room with a lofted, thick-beamed ceiling. But because of that, eavesdropping was effortless and clear.
“My grandmother can’t get us out of this,” Marcy shrieked. “I’ve told you that for an hour now! No one can. A hit and run? How stupid are you, Roberto? I will not go down for this. You’re on your own.”
“I tell police about you if you no help me.”
“Jesus Christ.” An exasperated breath. “What were you thinking?”
“I tell you again! I not try to kill her. I try to get other ragazza…”
“Girl. Speak English, damn it!”
“Eh, yes, girl. Prissy tol’ me she no reporter. She is helping quell’idiota.”
“But don’t you see? Nothing that woman uncovered would have mattered. The bastard has no memory of that night. Now the cops and press will sniff around, and what if they find a connection?”
The bastard has no memory of that night. She’d purposely set him up. But how could she have known he’d be the one to drink Tiffany’s Cosmo? Which one killed her? And why?
A bead of sweat trickled slowly down the side of his face. None of this made sense. He knew Marcy as a tough businesswoman and overprotective cousin. Haughtily proud to be the next Carlotta van der Kellen. And without a doubt, she still had a secret crush on him ever since their one-night stand. So what the fuck?
The shrill woman on the other side of the wall didn’t remotely resemble the woman he knew. Why risk everything to kill Tiffany—who was like her little sister?
“What did you do with the rental?” she screeched. A pause. “The car, you jackass!”
“I park at Avalanche and take taxi here.”
“Fabulous. Now they can trace your car to you, and you to me.”
“You speak to me of helping with your cugina. I say yes, and now everything is shit!” Vannini’s last shouted word echoed off the rafters. “It is so easy, no?” he continued. “You give her drink, she no remember. You take pictures of her and me so horrible she will keep my secret, and you get your business.”
Blackmail Lock understood, but business? Marcy owned her CPA firm outright.
He reached up and wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was overly warm in the house, and he was still bundled for below-freezing weather.
“I don’t know what to do,” Marcy said, and for the first time Lock heard uncertainty in her voice. “Running down that café girl changes everything.”
The silence that followed was deep and deafening, so when the backdoor opened, it sounded like the snap of a whip. The distinct step-drag of his brother’s footsteps could’ve been broadcast in surround sound.
“What was that?” Marcy said.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Lock whispered as Leo sidled up. He heard swift strides coming toward them and backed his brother up, scanning the gadget-laden place for a weapon.
“It was Jordan’s idea.”
Of course it was. He managed to get to the far side of the kitchen, near the backdoor, when the other two turned the corner.
Marcy gasped in horror, and Vannini muttered in Italian, turning a bull-fighting red.
“So let’s see if I got this straight,” Lock said conversationally, finally spotting the damn butcher block of knives on the other side of the kitchen. He glared at his nemesis then directed his gaze at Marcy. “For some reason, you planned to drug your beloved cousin for Vannini, so he could take lewd photographs and blackmail her into shutting up.”
Marcy’s freckles stood out in her ashen face. Her eyes glowed with hate. She didn’t answer.
“Then I thoughtlessly drank the Cosmo, ruining your plans. You called Tiffany at nine forty-three that night, long after I was looped. What did you say? How did you two go from blackmailing her to killing her?”
“I no kill her,” Vannini muttered.
Marcy swung around, lightning fast, and slapped him across the face. “Shut up. You’ve done enough.”
Mounting on all this shock was the bizarre vision of Vannini standing there with a stunned look on his face instead of defending himself. That sure wasn’t the skier he’d known all his competitive life. Who were these two?
Stupefied, he dragged his focus back to Marcy. “I also don’t get why that fuckhead thinks you’d lose your busines
s to Tiffany. She never wanted to be a CPA.”
Her lips tightened.
“It wasn’t your business you were losing, was it, Marcy?” Leo said softly. “Carlotta chose Tiffany for the board seat. I bet you were both informed that day, given Tiffany was a drunken mess even before entering the Avalanche. And the amount of rage that went into the stabbing.”
She stepped to the right and opened the pantry door. Out came a tin cookie jar decorated with snowflakes. Lock cut his gaze to Leo and was pretty sure they both thought the same thing. The crazy chick was going to feed them now.
Flipping off the lid, she pulled out a SIG Pro semi-automatic.
Leo stiffened, and Lock cursed, sweat streaming freely now. “Marcy, don’t.”
“Shut. Up.” Her lips quivered but the gun didn’t. “No. That’s not how it went. Grandmother didn’t even have the courtesy to call me. Just called that spoiled brat during the event I organized and told her to cancel the stupid reality show and make plans to move to New York.”
Still eyeing the gun, Lock shook his head. He hadn’t heard right. “You killed Tiffany to get on the board?”
“After all I’d done over the years to show Grandmother my dedication,” she whispered bitterly. “While all Tiffany ever did was fuck up. And she’s chosen?”
Her pupils were pinpoints, making her eyes look wild. Lock eased his brother back another few inches. They were three feet from the door, which might as well have been a mile given the speed of a bullet. He slipped a hand into his jacket pocket, fingering Leo’s cell phone, trying to distinguish where the nine and the one would be on the flat keypad.
“She didn’t want the seat,” he said to the one person on earth who knew this most.
“I know. She called from her condo, stinking drunk. Boo hoo, I don’t want the seat,” Marcy mimicked shrilly. “I did! So I called that old bitch, and you know what she said? ‘We’ll see how the child does. If she can’t step up to the pressures of the position, I’ll appoint you as the brains behind the seat. But make no mistake. She’ll keep the seat. She’ll remain the face of the family.’ Why am I surprised?” Marcy’s high-pitched laugh made him wince. “Tiffany, the anointed one.