The Wharf

by Carol Ericson

  They got half of that right. Kacie was smokin’ hot, but she was no cougar—at least not for him.

  He filled up his water bottle from the gym’s dispenser and then tossed his towel in the bin. She’d shot him down when he asked her to join him for dinner that night, but they planned to get together before her meeting with DB to give him another crack at finding the guy in the law-enforcement database.

  As far as he could tell, Kacie had spent the afternoon holed up in her hotel room—working, she said. He smacked the elevator button with the flat of his palm. That woman ran hot, very hot, and cold.

  Women. He sure loved ’em, but he couldn’t even pretend to understand ’em.

  He’d spent his afternoon dropping that doll off at the local precinct, touching base with his brother’s fellow officers and then tracking down his younger brother.

  He knew Judd was going to be out of town again, but he’d managed to catch him for about an hour before he headed to the airport, this time to work for the Saudi royal family. His P.I. brother had been getting higher-end gigs lately, a step up from spying on errant spouses.

  Ryan shook his head as he slipped his key card into his door. He’d barely recognized Judd with his suit sleeves covering his tattooed arms, his long hair slicked back.

  Once again, Judd had offered up his apartment to Ryan, but Ryan had passed. Judd was careless with his business and his women. Ryan didn’t want any surprises in the form of irate females dropping in—either ones Judd had spied on for their husbands or ones he’d loved and left.

  That was the excuse he had given Judd, anyway. If he took his brother up on his offer, he’d have to check out of this hotel. And Kacie Manning was in this hotel, one floor below him. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  He showered, changed and ate a burger at the restaurant in the lobby. Then he showed up at Kacie’s door, five minutes early.

  She’d stacked the remnants of her own room-service meal on the credenza. Papers and notebooks littered the desk around her laptop. She’d swapped her business attire for a pair of black jeans and a dark green top that accented the copper highlights in her hair and an expanse of soft, creamy skin above the neckline.

  Wedging her fist on one curvy hip, she tapped the toes of her bare foot. “You’re early—again.”

  “Am I?” Had he betrayed his eagerness to see her?

  “I was just going to clean up.” She flicked her fingers toward the abandoned dishes.

  “Let me.” He hoisted the tray and carried it toward the door.

  She scooted around him to pull the door open and then leaned against it while he pushed the tray against the wall in the hallway.

  He rose, dusting his hands together. “I ran into those teenagers at the pool today.”

  “Really?” She let the door slam. “Did they fess up to anything?”

  “Just that they thought you were smokin’ hot.” He would leave out the cougar part.

  Color rushed into her cheeks, and she snorted. “Must’ve been all that steam from the hot tub obscuring their vision. So, they didn’t see anyone else out there?”

  “No.” He tilted his head and hitched his thumbs in his pockets. Was she fishing for a compliment or did she really not understand the impact of that body on a red-blooded American male?

  She ducked her head and fussed with the laptop, her hair creating a veil over her face.

  Nope. She didn’t get it. Self-confident about everything except her looks. He knew the type.

  “I couldn’t get back to that system you were using.”

  “I’ll find it.” He sidled next to her at the desk by the window and brushed her arm with his fingers as he reached for the keyboard.

  Standing shoulder to shoulder with her, he felt her body quiver. Must be the excitement of discovering the identity of her contact. Couldn’t have been because of their close proximity, since she’d been shoving him away from her with both hands ever since he’d carried her bikini-clad body from the sauna.

  He pointed to her screen background, a middle-aged couple with a spaniel between them. “Your parents?”

  “And their faithful dog. They’ve had him for fifteen years.”

  He studied the pair, a sleek blonde with straight chin-length hair and a balding man who looked fit for his age. Kacie must have taken after her dad because she didn’t resemble her mom at all.

  He entered a URL and typed in his username, password and number from his token. The system whirred to life and he let out a breath. “It’s up.”

  Kacie stepped away from him and planted a chair between them. “Have a seat. I’ll give you what I know.”

  He settled on the edge of the chair, his hands hovering above the computer as he waited for it to connect. When the search bar appeared, he turned his head to look at her. “Date of incarceration?”

  “Can you enter a range of dates?” She leaned over him and her fragrant hair tickled his cheek.

  He swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “Maybe twenty or twenty-five years ago.”

  He typed in the date range. “Location?”

  “Let’s go with Washington State.” She jabbed her finger at the display, and the side of her breast skimmed his upper arm. She pulled back.

  He got rock hard. He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. “Washington. Crime?”

  “Murder.”

  He entered the man’s heinous crime, but even that couldn’t tame the heat surging through his body. He’d need a cold shower for that.

  “I can’t exactly enter his initials, but I can enter B followed by an asterisk and that should give us everyone with a last name starting with that letter—unless he’s lying to you.”

  “An ex-con lying? Say it ain’t so.” She knelt down beside his chair.

  “Then this is it.” He entered the initials in the name fields and clicked the search button.

  A little hourglass blinked in the center of the display.

  “Uh-oh. This could take a while.”

  “We have time.” She rose from her seated position and tapped at the clock in the lower right corner of the screen. Then she settled back on the floor. “Did you have a good afternoon?”

  Leaning back in the chair, he stretched his legs out to the side. “I took that doll to the SFPD.”

  “You didn’t have to do that. There’s no crime.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They know me there from my brother Sean, and besides, it’s professional courtesy.”

  “Did you give them any details?”

  “They didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.”

  “Well, thank you.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Did you get a chance to visit some old haunts in the city?”

  “I dropped in on my brother.”

  “I thought he was on extended leave.”

  “My other brother—Judd.”

  “He’s the youngest, right?”

  “Youngest and wildest.”

  “He’s a P.I.”

  That wasn’t really a question. She seemed to know his family history as well as he did. “Yep.”

  “Why didn’t you just stay with him?”

  “He was on his way out of town, too. He’s been doing some bodyguarding, and this time I think he’s guarding a suitcase full of jewels instead of a person.” Ryan’s gaze dropped to the top of her head. Besides, all the excitement he needed was right here at this hotel in Fisherman’s Wharf.

  “Wow, I bet he has some stories to tell.”

  “If he does, he keeps them to himself.” He jiggled the mouse to wake up the display. “Just last month he was working as a bodyguard for some pop princess on tour in Hawaii.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Oh, oh, I know who that is, but her name escapes me now. Aren’t you just a little bit envious?”

  Right now, working with Kacie and enjoying the way her quick mind picked up on his next thought and their easy back-and-forth banter, he didn’t envy anyone. “Naw. That’s Judd’s thing. He’s kind of rootless. I like my sma
ll town.”

  “Of course, you did have an opportunity tonight to party with that attractive hostess.” She threw up her hands. “Don’t let me get in your way of a good time. If you want to check it out after we meet my informant tonight, go for it.”

  He drew in his eyebrows. Was she trying to push him into that hostess’s arms? “Ah, not interested.”

  “Not a party kind of guy?”

  He would prefer a party of two in that king-size bed across the room. Leveling a gaze at her, he said in almost an undertone, “I like certain kinds of parties.”

  She jumped to her feet and brushed off the seat of her snug jeans as she wandered to the window.

  His voice must’ve betrayed his meaning, and it sure did fluster her. Either she wanted nothing to do with him, or he was growing on her.

  “If you change your mind, I’m sure she’d welcome you with open arms.”

  The beep of the computer saved him from trying to analyze her obsession with sending him away with some other woman.

  He hunched forward and scrolled through the entries. “There are quite a few here, but it won’t be an impossible task to comb through them.”

  “Too bad we can’t split them up.”

  “We can’t.” He rose from his chair and dragged the other one next to his and patted the seat. “So you might as well sit down next to me.”

  She moved the chair a few inches away from his and sat on one corner, ready to take flight if necessary. “Okay, what do you do, just click on the entry?”

  “That’s it.”

  They spent the next fifteen minutes selecting the cons, and Kacie’s shoulders began to get sore from holding them stiffly so she wouldn’t accidentally brush against Ryan again.

  When she’d accidentally mushed her breast against his biceps, she had nearly melted into a puddle. Of course, her chest had done a bunch of mushing against his when he’d carried her out of the sauna, and she’d been wearing a lot less then, but she’d been half out of it and hadn’t yet formed this powerful attraction to him.

  She rubbed the back of her neck as Ryan clicked on another possible suspect.

  He swung his head toward her. “Are you tired?”

  “My neck and shoulders are tight. I already put in a few hours of computer time this afternoon.”

  “Why don’t you go stretch out on the bed? If anything looks promising, I’ll call you over.”

  Her gaze darted to the bed and back to the computer. What would be worse, lying on a bed in the same room as Ryan or continuing to sit inches away from his hard body, inhaling his fresh, masculine scent?

  She pushed back from the desk so fast her chair tipped back.

  “Whoa.” Ryan caught it and righted it.

  She scurried to the bed, dragged the pillows from beneath the bedspread and punched them into position. Then she hopped onto the bed, her head sinking against the pile of pillows.

  “Let me know if you find anything, and help yourself to the mini-bar.”

  He hunched over the laptop and continued tapping and clicking.

  Good move. Her head began clearing once she was out of the Ryan realm. Without all his manliness parked next to her and invading her senses, her muscles relaxed and her breathing deepened. The sounds from the computer became hypnotic and she closed her eyes.

  Rough fingertips dabbled against her cheek and she burrowed into the pillows, a smile curving her lips.

  “Kacie?”

  “Mmm.” Warmth spread through her body and she felt safe, like the first time her foster parents brought her home.

  She rolled to her side and flung out her arm. Her hand hit an immovable object, and she peeled open one eye.

  Perching on the edge of the bed, Ryan smiled at her. “You dozed off.”

  She opened her other eye, noticed her hand resting against his thigh and snatched it back. She grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her body, bringing her knees to her chest.

  “Was I out long?” Had she been snoring? Drooling? She wiped the back of her hand across her dry mouth.

  “About an hour.”

  “Sorry.” Why wouldn’t he remove himself from the bed?

  “No worries. You looked so peaceful over here I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  She rubbed her eyes and scooched up to a sitting position, still clutching the pillow to her chest. “Did you find anything?”

  “I did, just now.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

  “You found DB?” Her fingertips buzzed and she dropped the pillow to her lap. She would’ve swung her legs off the bed, but Ryan’s six-foot-something frame of solid muscle blocked her way.

  He must’ve read the trapped-animal look in her eyes because he eased off the bed and took a step back. “It looks like DB is Duke Bannister. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sent to the big house for twenty-five to life. Served twenty-two of those years and then got paroled last year.”

  Tossing the pillow to the side, she scrambled from the bed. “Who’d he kill?”

  “His sister.”

  She tripped and he caught her around the waist. “Careful.”

  “Bannister told me I reminded him of his sister.”

  “Even more reason for me to come with you tonight.” Ryan gave her hip a pat before releasing her.

  Taking his vacated place in front of the computer, she dragged the chair forward and studied the screen. “Now that I know who he is, I can dig around his background and see if I can find out whether or not he’s working for Walker.”

  “You may be able to find that out tonight.”

  “How?” She pushed her bedhead hair from her face. “He’s not about to tell me if I ask him.”

  “You won’t have to ask him. If he attacks you, you’ll have your answer.”

  She hunched her shoulders. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Really? The dude killed his own sister.”

  “Okay, maybe you’re right, but you’re my muscle tonight.” She bit her lip and busied herself printing out Bannister’s page, second-guessing her plan to meet with Ryan in person. She’d have been better off conducting an interview with him over the phone or even over the computer. The man’s presence was scrambling her thoughts and overloading her senses.

  “We have about forty minutes. I’m going to get ready. Can we meet in the lobby in a half an hour?”

  “Sure.”

  She strode to the door and opened it wide, watching him as he moved from the room into the hallway. “Thanks for doing all the work while I snoozed.”

  “No problem. It looked like you needed the rest.”

  She pulled the door closed and banged her forehead against it. She needed to wrap up this interview process and get down to the business of proving Joseph Brody’s guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  She brushed her teeth, finger-combed her hair and stuffed her feet into a pair of canvas shoes. They’d do if she had to take off in a sprint.

  Ryan had beaten her to the punch again, greeting her with a big smile in the lobby ten minutes early.

  “Are you always early?” She threw her sweater over her shoulders, letting it hang.

  “Are you?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Me too.”

  Drawing her small purse across her body, she asked, “How is this going to work?”

  “Tell me where you met him last time. You start out first and I’ll follow you, slinking along in the shadows. I won’t be far behind you at any given time, but you won’t see me and neither will Bannister.”

  “Should I use a code word or something if I get into trouble?”

  “If you want to play spy games, go for it. Otherwise, a good old-fashioned scream will work.”

  “I mean—” she stepped through the front door of the hotel and nodded at the doorman “—if I start feeling nervous and I just want you to be primed and ready.”

  “I’m always primed and ready.”

  He winked at her and she rolled her eyes, but s
he could believe it with that body. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do. How about ‘sauna’? It’s where we first met, where I rescued you from danger the first time.”

  “The first time?” She raised her eyebrows. “Do you think there will be a second?”

  “There could be tonight—that’s the point.”

  “Okay, ‘sauna’ it is.” She gave him the location of her first meeting with Bannister and set out ahead of him, her footsteps jaunty and her head held high.

  The usual transients went about their usual business, but this time she eyed each one, wondering if he could have been the one who delivered the doll to the hotel.

  The moist air off the bay caressed her face and worked through the waves of her hair. Even though she’d left the city as a child for Seattle with her new family, the smells and feel of San Francisco had never left her—and never would.

  She cranked her head over her shoulder once, but couldn’t see one trace of Ryan. He was probably taking a different route to stake out a good location, and with his dark clothing and 49ers cap pulled low on his face, he’d blend right into the scenery of the wharf.

  Knots formed in her belly as she waited to cross the street before hitting the walkway along the wharf. Most of the restaurants were shutting down for the night or trying to, and all of the street performers had rolled up their props and gadgets from the sidewalk. Tourists still crisscrossed the streets, weaving in and out of the shops still open for business. The homeless population, the silent army of the night, shuffled from doorway to bench to bus stop, searching for a place to park their possessions.

  She strode through the crosswalk and turned left toward the less-populated area of the wharf, its tourist attractions long closed for the day. She spotted the low-slung building where she’d met Duke Bannister—assuming that was his actual name—the night before and dragged in a long breath.

  Her gaze scanned the vacant side of the building. The last time he’d come from around the corner of that building. Easier for a surprise attack?

  Tensing her muscles, she lightly clenched her hands at her sides. If Bannister got to her before Ryan got to him, she planned to do a little damage of her own first.

  She slowed her steps and cleared her throat. “DB?”

  If she used his real name, she might spook him. And she definitely wanted to hear what he had to say.