by Ana Barrons
He rolled off her and lay on his side, panting and praying that she had known it was him when she kissed him.
“Catherine,” he whispered. “Wake up, honey. You have to wake up.” He swallowed hard when he saw her eyelids begin to flutter, and he moved back a little farther. “It’s Joe, Catherine. Joe Rossi.” He could have added, “the scumbag reporter,” but he figured she would add that herself when she came fully awake.
He propped himself up on his elbow and slid back another few inches. Catherine’s chest was still heaving, although she was calming down some. Just looking at her was so arousing his heart seemed to be beating faster, not slower. She was so beautiful.
“Where...?” she whispered. She hadn’t seen him yet. She ran one elegant hand, the one that had pulled his head down, back over her hair and let it lie there, limply, on his pillow, then closed her eyes again. Had she had fallen back asleep? Then she moved her other hand to her abdomen, pressed down gently and stroked up to the underside of her breasts. He couldn’t look away.
“My God,” she whispered. “I’m alive.”
Chapter Ten
“Don’t be frightened,” Joe said softly.
Catherine jerked her head at the sound of his voice.
“You fell asleep in my bed with Mike. I came home and put Mike in his own bed. After I changed the sheets.”
“Oh.” That was all she said for several moments, and Joe held his breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She stared up at the ceiling, her hand on her bare abdomen. He was still as rock hard as he had been since the moment he had first touched her arm, and he ached. He wondered idly if his erection would ever go down now that he had touched her. It surely wasn’t going to happen in the foreseeable future.
“Did we...?” She swallowed. “I mean, after Mike went to bed, did we—”
“No,” Joe said. “You kissed me. And I kissed you back.”
She closed her eyes. “What else?”
“That was basically it.”
“My body tells me there was more to it than that.”
He swallowed hard. “Actually,” he said, deciding honesty was the best policy at this point, “my, uh, hand brushed the outside of your breast.” She was taking this remarkably well, considering whose bed she was in. “And it’s killing me to leave it at that.”
She frowned, incredulous. “You’re telling me that I was the one who initiated it? While I was asleep?”
“I tried to wake you up,” he said, sounding more defensive than he wanted to. “And then you said my name, and I said yes, it was me, and then you kissed me. Hard. Like you wanted me.”
She threw her arm over her face. “I see.” After a minute she spoke again. “Is there any situation in which you would not take advantage of me, Rossi?”
He had expected her to reject him, but it was still hard to take. And it grated on him to hear her call him Rossi instead of Joe. “You were lying in my bed wearing my sweatpants, you may recall. I didn’t lure you here.”
“Are you saying you simply couldn’t restrain yourself?” There was a hard edge to her voice. “I must have been dead asleep and in some kind of alternate universe to have kissed you.”
That hurt. “Want to know what you said when I told you it was me?”
She tensed.
Don’t want to hear that, do you? “I’m going to go grab a beer.” He pushed himself up and off the bed. He had to get away before he made things worse. “You want something?”
Her arm was still covering her eyes. “My clothes are still sitting in a pile on top of the washer, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess I could use a drink in that case. White wine if you have it.”
“I have it.”
“And do you have a robe or something I can put over this scrap of a tank top?”
“Yeah, I’ll get it for you.” He walked into the bathroom then tossed her a huge terrycloth robe. “I haven’t washed it all that recently, but I’m clean when I wear it.”
“Thanks.”
* * *
Joe heard her come up behind him in the kitchen and turned with the wineglass in his hand. She stood there wrapped a forest green robe that could have fit two of her, her long hair disheveled, her lips red from kissing, the skin around her mouth pink from rubbing against his unshaven face. After months of talking to her, thinking about her, fantasizing about meeting her, Catherine—his Catherine—was standing in his kitchen. A lump started to form in his throat and he coughed.
She took the glass from him and sipped quickly. He didn’t flip on the overhead light, preferring the softer light above the stove. But he could see well enough to spot the slight tremble in her hand, the flush of embarrassment on her cheeks. Not that he could blame her.
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here,” she said.
He smiled. “It crossed my mind.”
“I stuck around when I saw that Mike was sick and Tiffany couldn’t reach you.” The disapproval was plain in her voice.
“Thank you for that.” He felt the need to defend himself to her. Again. “My cell phone was off. I don’t normally leave Mike and Tiffany alone that long after dark. You know how protective I am about Mike.”
Catherine ignored his last statement. “I came by on an impulse because I was intrigued by what you said on the phone the other night. That you sensed something wasn’t right about my sister’s case. And your note said you’d tell me what you knew. I’d like to hear what you have to say.”
Joe nodded. This was a start. “Why don’t we go sit down in the living room?”
She hesitated. “I should wash my clothes first, or I’ll be here all night.” She moved past him toward the mudroom, kicking the robe out from under her feet as she walked. “I would have done it earlier, but there were clothes in the washer and Mike was feeling pretty bad.” She grabbed the damp pile of clothes off the top. “Actually, they don’t smell all that bad. I can throw them in the dryer and wash them tomorrow.”
“It won’t take long to wash them,” he said. He opened the lid, pulled out the wet clothes and stuck them in the dryer. “You’ll hate yourself if you put them on smelling like vomit. Trust me. I was in a fraternity.”
She dumped the clothes in without responding or cracking a smile, and Joe poured some liquid detergent over them. He used to make her laugh. He was certain that was why she’d stopped hanging up on him in the beginning, not long after Blair disappeared. He had loved the sound of her laughter and the way it made him feel to know he had lifted her out of the darkness, at least for a few minutes. He missed that.
When the wash cycle started they went into the kitchen and sat down at the table. He didn’t suggest going into the living room again, figuring she probably felt safer with a solid block of wood between them—one that wasn’t part of his anatomy. They sat quietly, sipping at their drinks, not making eye contact.
“What made you sense that something was wrong?” she asked. She was staring into her wineglass as though it held the secrets of the universe.
Where to start? Joe leaned forward. “A number of things. One. When your sister first disappeared, the police were reasonably forthcoming with the press about what they knew, which, admittedly, wasn’t a whole hell of a lot. They were circulating her photo throughout the area—up and down the east coast, seeing as she was from New England, and set up a twenty-four-hour tip line. I know they were chasing down the more credible leads.”
“Then you got a tip about Blair’s affairs with those politicians from your ‘anonymous source,’ which the police ultimately dismissed as gossip.”
“Yeah, and the feminist groups accused me and the Herald of putting Blair’s morality on trial. All I was trying to do was stir things up, get the investigation off the ground. I mean, she disappeared without a trace
and the police had squat.”
“Then the police announced that they’d put Detective Sadler in charge,” Catherine said. “I thought it was because the other detective, I can’t remember his name—”
“Hawkins.”
“Yeah. I figured he wasn’t doing a good enough job, so they replaced him. I remember you telling me Sadler was a homicide detective, and that putting him in charge of a missing person investigation had to mean the MPD was treating Blair’s disappearance as a probable homicide.”
“That’s what everybody assumed. Otherwise, why drag him over to the second district? But the investigation went from bad to worse once he got there. At least that’s what it looks like, in retrospect.”
They were both quiet for a few moments.
“So,” Catherine said. “You weren’t getting anywhere with your story and people were doubting your credibility.” She raised her eyes to Joe slowly, and he could see the anger there. “That’s when you started calling me.”
He wasn’t about to deny it. “That’s right. I hit a brick wall. Suddenly the MPD was clamming up, saying they were making ‘confidential inquiries’ into a number of important tips. So, of course, I figured they were going after my leads on the QT, trying to keep it hush-hush to avoid lawsuits, that sort of thing. I tried to pick up their trail by contacting all the leads I expected to be on their list, you know, aides, neighbors and so forth, and discovered that the police had warned these people not to talk to the press, saying they would be compromising the investigation.”
Catherine listened intently.
“But I kept bugging them, and a few people finally told me the police had never gotten back to them. This was months after Blair disappeared.”
“Were any of those people willing to give you useful information?”
He shook his head. “In a criminal investigation it’s tough to get people to talk because they don’t want to be involved in any way, shape or form, and they know that by nature reporters don’t keep secrets real well.”
The expression on Catherine’s face slammed him with the realization of what he’d said. He knew that expression. He’d seen it all too often on his father in the weeks after his mother had walked out on them. The mouth twisted into a bitter sneer, reflecting the anger, and the eyes filled with pain so white-hot it hurt to look at them. The confused, guilty and desperately unhappy seven-year-old had learned in those weeks not to talk about Mommy anymore. Now he was confronted with the same raw pain staring at him from across the table, and the knife twisted in his gut. Mercifully, Catherine looked away first.
Joe stood and walked to the window. He raised one arm to the top of the frame and leaned on it, staring out at the dim outline of trees and the side of his neighbor’s house. “I can’t excuse what I did,” he said. “I can only tell you that I had less than an hour to go to press and I wanted a story that would get the media and the public so fired up that the police couldn’t dismiss the allegations against these guys—the politicians—as gossip again. I needed some corroboration from outside of Washington that Blair was no saint. I had to establish a pattern of behavior that would make it easy to believe she’d slept with a married government official.”
“And what better way to do that but to say with absolute confidence that Blair had had an affair with her poor sister’s husband.”
Joe raised his other arm to the window frame and closed his eyes. “That’s right.”
“After all,” Catherine went on, sarcasm and anger pouring out of every word, “if she was reckless enough to break up her sister’s marriage, surely she would be willing to engage in affairs with other married men and damn the consequences. Do I have that about right, Rossi?”
He winced at the use of his last name. More than the punch in the jaw, it signaled that he had destroyed whatever closeness they’d once had, and it hurt. He pushed away from the window and faced her. “Yes, damn it. And it worked. Finally there were people willing to go on record saying they had actually seen Blair with important men, including the ones I named in the article. Granted, it didn’t make the guys murderers, but it put people’s focus back on the power structure, where I still believe it belongs.”
“For exactly four days,” Catherine said. “Until the police announced that they had a suspect in custody.”
“Right. Which cut the investigation off at the knees right when people were starting to open up.”
“Much to the delight of the politicians.” She speared her fingers through her tangled hair.
“Let me ask you something.”
“Oh, now you’re asking my permission? How considerate.” Her voice was harsh, as was her expression.
“Why would the police deliberately do a half-assed job with a high-profile disappearance?” He began to tick off points on his fingers. “Your sister was young and extremely attractive and she worked on Capitol Hill. We all know how the media loves to catch politicians with their pants down. Not a single female came forward to defend Blair’s reputation, other than the women’s groups, and they didn’t know her.”
Catherine studied her hands.
“Nothing appeared to be out of place in her apartment, no suitcases were missing, nothing like that. She didn’t contact her boss or anyone else to say she was going away. She had seemed perfectly normal at work, happy, certainly not depressed. It became increasingly obvious that there had been foul play.” He threw up his hands. “So what do the police do? They dismiss the Herald’s allegations as nothing but gossip and then suddenly stop following through with their ‘confidential inquiries.’ What’s wrong with this picture?”
“You’re saying somebody got to the police?” Her sarcasm was gone. “Somebody powerful?”
Joe pulled out a chair and straddled it. “Exactly. Nothing else makes sense.”
She nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. But couldn’t it have been just a matter of incompetence? Overwork?”
Joe shook his head. Now it was Catherine’s turn to get up and stare out the window. It seemed like a long time before she spoke.
“Blair would never in a million years have gone out to some wooded island of her own free will,” she said. “And in spite of her sexual habits, there’s no way in hell she would go out with some handyman. She was determined to marry a rich man, preferably somebody famous. I’m sure that was one reason she moved to Washington. After.”
Yeah, he got the code. After the affair with Alan.
“And nobody in their right mind would kidnap someone and take them to Roosevelt Island to do—anything,” he said, catching himself at the last moment. “It’s a friggin’ tourist attraction, for Christ’s sake. If the guy wanted privacy, he’d go into Rock Creek Park or an abandoned building or something.”
Catherine sighed deeply. “I’d like to go out to Roosevelt Island, but I haven’t built up the courage. Pretty pathetic.”
“No, it’s not the least bit pathetic.” He paused. “Maybe it would be easier if we went together.”
Her expression was incredulous. “Why? So you can hold my hand? Or make soothing noises, make me believe I’m not alone?” She shook her head. “You know the saying, Rossi. ‘Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.’ Please don’t confuse my coming here to get information out of you with some kind of misguided search for comfort, okay?”
Christ. “I’ll be sure not to make that mistake. But the offer stands. I drove by the Roosevelt Island parking lot yesterday and the police tape was gone and the gate to the footbridge was open. I’m planning to go in, even though there’s still police tape up around the site where... Around the site. You don’t have a car, right?”
“No. But I could take a cab, or rent a car.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself, but I always say two pairs of eyes are better than one. If we go together, one of us might see something or come up wi
th an idea the other one didn’t consider. You’ve spent a lot more time than I have in the woods.” He stared at her, wondering if she would react to his second reference to past conversations. She looked away.
“I don’t suppose you’ve found out anything about this handyman that isn’t already public knowledge,” she said.
“Actually, I did learn something from a source, but I’m not sure I believe it.”
“Same one? Your mystery source?”
“No, different one,” he lied. “That’s why I’m a little hesitant to tell you. I can’t print it.”
“Since when—”
“—did that ever stop me? Yeah, yeah, I know.” He was getting tired of her attitude. Couldn’t she see that they were on the same side? “You want to hear this or not?”
“I want to hear it.”
“Guy’s an Arab, right? Well, my—”
“Don’t tell me he’s with al Qaeda.”
“My source says the guy’s suspected of terrorist activity. Which means nobody can say anything about him, including reveal his identity.” At the expression on Catherine’s face, he added, “It is possible, you know.” He hated to sound defensive about something else, particularly about something he didn’t buy himself, but he hated the disbelief on her face more.
“Sounds pretty damn convenient to me,” she said.
“Yeah,” Joe admitted. “My thoughts exactly.”
Catherine paced around the kitchen, absently kicking the robe out of her way. He decided to try one more time.
“Listen, Catherine,” he said, “whatever you may think of me, we both want to know who killed Blair. Why don’t we team up? You knew her, what she liked, what she didn’t. I know Washington. If we talk to people together, there’s a much better chance we’ll get someone to open up. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”