She came into the kitchen was wearing yoga pants and a hoodie. Her hair was a little wet and it looked a shade darker because of it.
"You're having doubts?" she asked me, but I didn't want to answer that particular question.
"What did you think of him?"
She sat on the bar stool and gnawed on a celery stick before answering. She made a face and put the stick back on the tray, then went on foraging for something tastier. She didn't look at me as she spoke.
"I didn't get a feeling of violent maniac. He seemed very… controlled. The murders were all frenzied attacks, right?"
"Yes. Anything else?"
"I think he's not the guy. And I think he's the guy. The way he looked at me at the end…"
My heart sped up and my whole body tensed. It wasn't possible. She couldn't have been in danger, could she?
"How did he look at you?"
"Like I was prey."
I clenched my fists and tried very hard not to shake her. That was not the way to make a name for herself. Putting herself in danger was not a good career move. Except, of course, it was. Not a smart one, but in our line of work, bravery is more often praised more than intelligence or strategic thinking. I hid my anger and my fear deep, so that no trace of them bled into my voice.
"What did you do?"
"Nothing really. I pretended to stumble when he looked at me."
That would do it. Especially if she looked at him a certain way. This girl had no idea how little it took for some monsters to be unleashed.
"You have to stick to the script, Skye. I know it's tempting to goad the killers into exposing themselves but there's a time and place for that."
"Relax, Woods, I don't have a death wish."
The way she said my name embarrassed me. I had used her first name, which was a breach of etiquette between colleagues who didn't know each other all that well. I treated her like a child, but I needed to get to her somehow.
"I'm serious. We're here to keep an eye on him, not to engage him."
She looked at me with a raised eyebrow, but she pursed her lips instead of saying anything. That was unexpected. If I read her right, she was used to speaking her mind. That was not a good way to build a strong partnership. Again, I wished Katherine was here instead of her.
"Break's over. I'm going back to the study to watch the house."
*
I heard the music through the door. In the living room, Skye was practicing Tai Chi with a black scarf tied over her eyes. She was wearing the same grey yoga pants as before, but the hoodie was on the couch. Her electric blue top accentuated her tan. The material molded onto her curves. The sports bra didn't do much to hide the ample forms of her breasts. The low sensual music was not a good fit for her exercise. Her movements were precise, crisp, completely out of sync with the breathy voice of Nina Simone. I wondered if she realized how inviting was that music. I was watching her carefully and I caught her shiver when Nina Simone sang "What's the matter daddy, come on, save my soul. I want some sugar in my bowl". I saw her nipples hardening and I heard her breathing change. Her movements lost some of their grace, for a moment. She went on with her practice and the playlist eventually skipped to the next song.
I went back into the study. I had tried very hard to ignore the small signs. I couldn't afford to hide from reality any more. It was as bad as it could be. Not only I was attracted to a girl twenty years younger than me, but whether she knew it or not, she was attracted to me.
It wasn't a shocking revelation. My ability to read people had always been one of my strong points and I had already noticed and catalogued quite a few of her reactions around me. It was unfortunate that I couldn't remain indifferent. My body wanted, although my mind and my affection weren't engaged. She was too beautiful to keep my distance from her and too upbeat to fall in love with her. Maybe after this job was over, we'd have the chance to get this attraction out of our systems. She wasn't my type, and I wasn't hers. All would take was one night or a few nights together and then we'd go back to our lives.
Chapter 11 Hungry and horny
Skye
Tai Chi usually calmed me down, but for some mysterious reason, that day it was having the opposite effect. I wished I could go to my favorite gym in LA, spar for a few hours with my Muay Thai partners and at the end do one of those New Agey circle things, too tired to sit up straight on our meditation cushions, listening to sensei talk to us about life and balance. It was strange to miss that part of my life so much. I did believe what I had told the Captain - cops were cops wherever they were. I was a cop when I was chained to a desk just as much as I was in that suburban utopia. I was also horny as hell.
My stomach growled. Great, I was hungry! I should have stashed some crackers or chocolate bars in my room. This was a stakeout basically. I just stayed in a comfortable room instead of a squad car. Anna had the afternoon shift at the club and we decided to show up after it started. I sat on my bed and looked out the window to Dvorak's house. My mind drifted to our jog that morning. I had been the one feeling like a creep for pretending to be what I wasn't, all the way up to that moment at the end. Something ugly had looked at me through his eyes.
I started to get dressed not taking my eyes off the window. Woods was downstairs, also watching them. I hadn't seen him since breakfast and I didn't seek out his company. A part of me needed to keep him away from me because another part of me wanted to get dangerously close to him. Reading his case files was like reading high quality thrillers. Watching his interrogations was like watching Masterpiece Theater. I shook my head. As much as I wished I could be a grown up about it, I had to admit I had a bad case of hero worship. I had to be at my best during this mission to stand a chance of measuring up to him. Like I needed more motivation than scoring another high profile arrest.
The outfits Katherine had chosen for me were great for LA weather but on a New York autumn, they all seemed too revealing, which was probably the idea. The skirt was short enough to make me look like a Russian tennis player. The top was loose, hanging off one shoulder. If I used the knee length socks I'd look more like a Playboy model than a Berkeley student. I decided to go for the only tights I had which didn't show my skin. Leo would have to content himself with my bare shoulder. If he was the killer… maybe I should do something to tempt him more. So what if Woods made me promise to behave myself? Those were just words. I read his cases. He had taken risks in the course of his investigations. Our very mission was his way of trying to smoke out the killer.
About another hour later, Anna got out of the house and headed for the restaurant. I literally ran out of my room and at the bottom of the stairs I collided with Woods. He should have caught me by the shoulders and stopped me from a safe distance, instead he let me run all the way into him. My breasts crushed against his chest and the air went out of me in one breath. I jumped away from him, mortified that the sound coming out of my mouth was a lot like a moan.
He pretended not to notice which was fine by me.
"I just got a call from the Captain. We have the ok to plant a tracking device in his car."
That was good news. It meant that once he was out of Gracenote our people could tail him.
Chapter 12 Meeting Anna
Nicholas
Anna Dvorak greeted us at the restaurant. She wore a light blue top and a pencil skirt. Her hair was gathered up in a low elegant bun with a few wisps of auburn hair framing her heart shaped face. She had an understated gloss over her full lips that made me think of her mouth as innocent and sensual at the same time. She was shorter even than Katherine, but unlike my partner who was all sinew and hidden muscles, Anna was all soft curves and girlish smiles. She had big doe eyes, warm brown bordered by long silky black lashes. She batted them at me when we came in.
"Welcome to the Gracenote," she said.
We introduced ourselves, I mentioned we were new to the community and she took us to a table. Her attention was focused on me the whole time, ignoring Skye comple
tely. I followed her with my gaze when she left. As with most women, I felt nothing for her. I assessed her with cold detachment, and I picked up a ping on my inner radar. If this was a regular restaurant in the city, I might have counted her behavior as motivated by getting a big tip. I'll have to get a second reading of the girl. I had a feeling that my unprofessional thoughts about the girl at my table might affect my abilities.
Our table was probably the best in the whole place. The view from the window was breathtaking. The restaurant was at the top floor of the tallest building in the complex. We could see our fancy houses, the tree bordered alleys, the shades of green, yellow and rust where the park was. The autumn sun was setting over our little fairytale village adding shades of red gold over everything. Skye took in the view with wide-eyed wonder. Right when I thought I was watching the real her, she cooed in her Sophia-brat voice.
"Aww, it's so beautiful." Then she turned in her seat and flipped through the menu. "I could eat an elephant."
"One bite at a time," I said, trying to play along. I didn't like that there were times when she could fool me into thinking I saw the real her. It was clear that her method was full immersion into the role she played.
She looked at me over her menu like I wasn't making any sense.
"Don't be silly, dad. It was just a figure of speech. They don't have elephant meat on the menu. I'll have a grilled lemon herb Mediterranean chicken salad and a lemonade."
"You're not on a date, you can order real food."
I wondered why I said that. When was the last time I had a date? Besides, I knew next to nothing about her. For all I knew she might be a salad and lemon kind of girl. She clearly had no interest in the breadsticks on our table.
"It is real food," she started to argue, but she lowered her gaze and mumbled, "and a tiramisu."
"I'm sorry what was that?"
She threw a teenage dagger look and I raised my hands in surrender. It was fun teasing her. I was still smiling when Anna came to take our order. I told her what Sophia wanted, and then I asked her what she would recommend me.
"The ossobuco is very good. My father says it's the best thing on the menu."
"Then that's what I'll have."
She gave me a nod and a sweet smile, then left without as much as a glance in my daughter's direction.
"It doesn't look like I made much of an impression," Skye said in her cop tone.
My mind was sifting through clues and memories. There was a vaguely sexualized aspect to her behavior. She probably wasn't particularly attracted to me, I just fit some label in her head.
"She probably flirts with most men. It's an automatic reaction."
"Well, I think that was very rude," she said in the prissy tone of a stuck up former cheerleader who got dissed.
I was getting better at differentiating Skye from Sophia. I wondered which of them I preferred.
Leonard Dvorak walked in while we were still waiting for our meals. Skye had abandoned her no breadsticks attitude. She was on her third one and she looked hungry enough to go into the kitchen and make her own food. I nodded a casual hello, as much as you would greet to someone you talked to for a few minutes at the gym. To my surprise, he came to our table. We shook hands and got reacquainted with each other.
"Do you want to sit with us?" I asked him.
He accepted so casually it made me even more worried about his skills. Throughout the meal, he didn't look at Skye too much or too little. He engaged her in conversation with the usual awkwardness of someone aware of the generation gap. He made perfectly appropriate conversation with his daughter when she came by. He even tried to find something Anna and Sophia had in common. My daughter reacted like a bratty teenager, with poorly concealed eye-rolls annoying even me. Except for the part about running.
"Do you run every morning?" she asked.
"Yes. A few laps around the park before heading for work."
"Mind if I tag along? Like this morning, but not by accident."
Her smile was charming and innocent. You'd have to be a monster to read anything else in her proposal. Either Dvorak was a consummate actor, or he wasn't interested in Sophia. I couldn't read any overt arousal in his body language.
"Sure. Every morning at 6.30."
"It's a date," she said.
And there it was. Just a flash, but I saw it. Hunger sparkled in his eyes when he looked at her. I was going to be in hell every morning when she went out to run with him.
After that, we got talking about the new Nakatomi building downtown. He had an interesting engineering perspective about it, and I knew enough about architecture to fake my way through the conversation.
Chapter 13 Dinner with Leo
Skye
During dinner, I spaced out like any good teenager while the two dads talked about architecture. It bothered me to admit that Leo Dvorak was attractive. I wasn't exactly attracted to him, but that was the label that stuck in my head. It was probably Woods's fault. His presence revved up my hormones like crazy. His label was stuck in my head as well. Fuckable. For fuck's sake, I was supposed to act like a teenager, not feel or think like one!
The order finally came before I could drift further into unprofessional thoughts about my partner. The salad was good but by the end, I was still hungry. Woods and Dvorak still had plenty of food on their plates. I tried to fill up on lemonade but it didn't do the trick.
"This is excellent ossobucco," Woods said. "I can see why it's your favorite."
Dvorak nodded.
"The chef here is a wizard with meat."
The meat looked so good it made my mouth water. I was giving Woods a puppy eye look which he ignored. I reached into his plate and stuck my fork tentatively in a corner of the steak. He did look at me then, a smile softening the deep circles under his eyes.
"I told you to get a real meal," he said.
"Pleeease," I whined. "I'll give you some of my desert."
"Nice try. I ordered dessert as well."
"But I'm still hungry."
He shook his head, but he cut the meat around my fork enough for a bite. The veal melted in my mouth. I closed my eyes to savor the delicious flavors. It would be nice of him if he fed me a few more pieces. That was a dangerous train of thought right there. When I opened my eyes, he was already switching our plates.
"Thank you, daddy," I said digging in with enthusiasm.
I was still hungry and the food was yummy, but mainly I wanted to cover up the fluttering in my stomach when I heard the words coming out of my mouth. Maybe because I knew we were pretending, whenever I called him daddy I felt like we engaged in a sexual role-playing game.
That settled it, I absolutely hated going undercover with a partner.
I was happily munching away at my newly acquired meal when Anna showed up. She bent over to kiss her father on the cheek.
"Would you like anything else?"
This time she gave me a passing glance, and I was the one pretending she didn't exist.
"Yes, I'd like a plate of scaloppini. I was mugged of my ossobucco."
She smiled at his joke and I frowned, but I my mouth was too full to protest.
"Oh, that was lovely!" I said when I finished, interrupting what was to me a very boring conversation about buildings.
Even in my inner monologue, I started to sound like Sophia Doyle. Architecture was a mildly interesting subject for me, but with Sophia's background in social studies, I wasn't supposed to enjoy it all that much. That and the full stomach weren't conducive to sparkling insights from me. I had to shake the post-meal sluggishness. It was a perfect time to plant the tracking device on Dvorak's car with him and Anna both at the restaurant.
"Excuse me, I going to go powder my nose."
They two men stood up when I got up. I was tempted to kiss Woods on the cheek as a sign of gratitude for the meal. Maybe not. I was getting too handsy and huggy with him already. I pretended to look for the toilets, and when I was satisfied that no one was watching me, I s
neaked out of the restaurant. My nice and comfortable shoes weren't designed for running and neither were my clothes, but I couldn't afford to be gone too long. Fortunately it was already dark outside.
It was child's play to place the tracker in his car. The only trick was not to get any dirt or grease on me when I knelt by the car and shoved my hand inside the wheel guard.
When I got back, I snuck into the bathroom and washed my hands. On my way out, I bumped into Anna.
"The food was amazing," I said.
"Thank you. So, you're new here?"
Her voice was even and I could tell she was just trying to be polite. Sophia didn't like her at all, but detective Walker had to get close to her.
"We moved in yesterday. We're still unpacking."
"Will your mother come soon?"
My shoulders drooped and a shadow passed over my face. I sat down on a red velvet couch in the hallway, blinking slowly as if I wanted to erase an image. I had rehearsed this moment, and made sure that my voice broke a little when I spoke.
"My mother is dead."
She sat down next to me. The emotion on her features was more genuine now.
"I'm sorry. I saw that your father wears a wedding ring and I thought…"
She floundered and her voice trailed off. I tried to put her at ease without appearing too casual.
"It's ok. She died last month. We… we haven't adjusted very well."
"I understand."
I wondered why she didn't tell me that her own mother died. For a moment, I was about to ask if her parents were divorced because her father didn't wear a wedding ring, but thought better of it.
"So, what can a girl do for fun around here?"
"Not much," she said. "The gym is excellent, if it's your thing."
"It will have to be."
Back at the table the two men were engaged in the same conversation. How could an evening with my idol and a serial killer be boring? That was just wrong.
Darkening Skye (Under Covers Book 1) Page 5