by Lee McKenzie
Sam and Kristi traded another knowing glance.
“Don’t start, you two,” she warned. “Don’t even think about it.”
Sam feigned surprise, Kristi sealed her lips with an imaginary key and tossed it over her shoulder, and they grinned at each other again.
But Claire couldn’t help thinking about it. Even though it was just a couple of pounds, she felt different. Not thinner, but she did feel... Okay, go ahead, let yourself think it. Sexy.
She made a decaf Americano for Sam and a skinny decaf latte for herself—just in case—while the kettle boiled for tea. When the drinks were ready, she set them on a tray. “Let’s sit at the dining room table.”
The dining room was not so much a room as an area defined as such by the presence of a large, sleek table and eight high-backed parsons’ chairs. It was bordered on one side by the back of the leather sofa in the living area, and on another by the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Puget Sound.
Kristi picked up her tea. “I do love this view.”
“It’s a major selling feature,” Sam said. “Not really my thing, though. I love the view of Lake Union from our place, but at the same time we still have a lot of privacy. Having that other tower right there, wondering who’s behind those windows and whether or not they can see us...” To make her point, she gave a little shudder. “It’s kind of creepy.”
Until a few days ago, Claire hadn’t given it much thought. Now, knowing that Donald was hanging around, possibly even coming inside the apartment when she wasn’t here, she was creeped out, too, but for different reasons. It was time to move on.
She had noticed that Luke seemed interested in the view, especially from the windows that faced the next tower. That’s where she’d seen him with the window-washing crew, so it might have something to do with that. He hadn’t said anything more about looking into that company and since it was part of a police investigation he probably couldn’t, but she assumed he’d be back there on Monday. At least he wouldn’t have far to go to work, she thought.
“All right, let’s get started.” Kristi’s laptop was open and ready.
Claire sipped her latte. “First I need a timeline. After I talk to my lawyer tomorrow, I’ll call my friend Brenda about listing the condo for me.”
Sam tapped the eraser end of her pencil against the page on her clipboard. “Will Donald agree to using her?”
“He won’t have a choice. We’re co-owners, but this is my home and I want total control over how it’s being shown. I trust Brenda, so Donald will have to trust her, too.”
Kristi dug her calendar out of her bag and flipped it open. “Sam and I should finish up at the Fletcher house tomorrow, and I have an appointment with a prospective client on Thursday morning, otherwise my week is clear.”
“I’m going to a demolition site on Wednesday to salvage some oak flooring and anything else that looks promising. Other than that, I’m all yours.”
“I appreciate this so much,” Claire said. “I don’t think there’s much we need to do here.”
“I agree. Your home always looks like a magazine spread,” Sam said.
Kristi looked around and gave a little sigh. “No toys, no stray items of clothing, no dog hair all over everything.”
And no character, Claire thought. None whatsoever. Starting tomorrow there might be a dog, though. Maybe a baby in nine months. Her pulse sped up. She shouldn’t even be thinking about that possibility, and this wasn’t the time to distract her friends with those tidbits.
“And you both know how much I envy you.”
“Your turn will come,” Sam said.
“And when it does, you’re going to be an awesome mom. And dog owner,” Kristi said, because everyone knew Claire wanted one. “Now, about that timeline...”
“Right. Lawyer and real estate agent tomorrow. Our calendars are all clear on Tuesday, so we can start in here. Sam, I don’t think we need much in terms of renovations, but I’ve always thought I could make more of the terrace.”
“I agree. I’ll take some measurements out there today and see what I can come up with. Right away I’m thinking cedar planters and some bench seating that includes built-in storage. Those are easy to build on-site, especially if I have the boards precut, and they can be left to age naturally.”
“That’s a great idea,” Kristi said. “Inside I’ll want to unify the look. You have some lovely folk art pieces—the welcome wreath on the door, the painted milk can you use for umbrellas. They’re very homey and totally you, but the contrast between those things and the modern interior is too...contrasty.”
Claire knew that, but she loved those things because to her they gave the place a cosier feel. “I’ll pack them up and put them in my storage locker,” she said as she typed it into her task list. “What else?”
Kristi gazed around the space. “The decor is very monochromatic. That adds to the ultramodern feel of the space, but it also feels generic so I think you should layer in some colour. We’ll look for a few simple pieces that will work here and that you’ll be able to take to your new place.”
“And now we’re talking colors.” Sam stood and unclipped a measuring tape from her belt. “That’s my cue to go out and take a look at the terrace. Just promise me there won’t be any wallpaper.”
“No wallpaper, I promise!” Claire laughed and gave her a wave. “Go do your thing. We’ll come get you when we’ve finished in here.”
* * *
LUKE WAS THE FIRST TO arrive for the meeting at the precinct. He paced across the room and back, twice, and was debating whether to stay put or go look for Kate Bradshaw to see if she’d dug up anything on Donald when Jason Wong strode into the room.
“Afternoon, Sarge.”
“Luke. Glad you could make it. Where’s everyone else?”
“Don’t know. Maybe finishing their Sunday brunch and cursing the boss who called them before noon on a Sunday and told them to get down here for a meeting?”
Jason laughed. “Yeah, I’m a real ogre. There’ve been a couple new developments, including information on Phong’s whereabouts. Could be the break we’ve been waiting for.”
It was about time. “I’m sure everyone’s on their way. In fact, here’s one now,” he said as Cam Ferguson walked into the room.
“Jason, Luke. How’s it going?”
They both agreed it was going well.
“Thanks for coming in. I know you haven’t had a lot of sleep.”
Luke hadn’t, either, but at least he’d spent the night in a bed. After Cam had finished up at the airport yesterday, he’d taken over for Lindi in one of the surveillance vans.
Cam ran a hand over the stubble on his chin and glanced at the clock on the wall behind Jason’s desk. “Couple hours.”
“It shows,” Luke said, knowing his colleague could take a little good-natured ribbing, no matter how sleep-deprived he was.
“Unlike Detective Smithe-with-an-e,” Wong said as Patsy strolled in, a Starbucks cup in one hand, her phone in the other, calm, cool and collected as always.
“What can I say? A girl needs her sleep,” she quipped.
Unlike Cam, Luke figured she’d look this good on no sleep.
“Where’s Derek and Dex?” Patsy asked.
Jason checked his watch. “On their way.”
“I’m here, I’m here,” Derek said, rushing in. “Had to drop one of the boys at the soccer field. I’d’ve asked the wife to do it, only she took the other one to the pool for swimming practice.”
A few days ago Luke would’ve felt sorry for the poor guy and congratulated himself on being footloose and free of family obligations. Now as he watched Derek settle onto a chair, looking a little harried, he didn’t feel so smug. From the few things Derek had said about his family, Luke got the sense that he and his wife shared household and child-raising responsibilities. They were a team. There was a time when he’d have considered this couple to be just plain lucky to have found a pattern that worked, but now he k
new it was more than good fortune. Derek worked at it, so did Jason. And while Luke hadn’t grown up with any kind of role model for being a husband and a father, he was surrounded by them now.
“Where’s Dex?” Derek asked.
“Right behind you.” Lindi Dexter stood in the doorway in paint-spattered jeans and an old sweatshirt, ponytail pulled through the back of her ball cap.
“Good of you to join us,” Cam said.
Lindi grinned and flipped him the bird. “Hey, I was painting my kid’s bedroom. It’s my day off.” She was a single mom with two teenage daughters. Luke had no idea how she managed to hold it all together, but she did. Women were way better at that than most men, or so it seemed to him.
“Now that we’re all here and the pleasantries are out of the way,” Jason said, wasting no time getting down to business, “we have new information on Phong. A security guard spotted him at Sea-Tac last night, coming off a red-eye from Miami. We weren’t even sure he was in the country, now he’s right here in our backyard.”
Derek rubbed his hands together. “He’s as good as ours.”
“Was he alone?” Patsy asked. “Or did he bring more girls with him?”
“He’s too careful for that,” Jason said. “He has other people doing drug drops and smuggling the girls into the country. We’ve been picking up communications, though. Text messages and emails with instructions for his lackeys. Cam’s been able to unencrypt them, and he figures it’s Phong who’s sending them.”
Luke gave him a congratulatory slap on the shoulder. “Nice work.”
“Thanks. The messages are coming from a cell phone, and there’s good reason to believe it’s Phong’s. The guy’s extremely careful, though, and the challenge—if and when we ever do pick him up—will be to make sure he has the phone on him. If it isn’t, then he’ll deny he ever had one and claim he’s just a victim of circumstances, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Yada, yada,” Patsy chimed in. “Meanwhile he’s smuggling girls, and by girls I mean children, into the States and forcing them into the sex trade. We need to get this guy.”
“We’re close,” Jason said. “And getting closer by the hour. That’s why I needed you all here for a face-to-face. If we’re going to pull this off, we need a unified effort. Luke has a new development, and I’ll start by letting him fill you in on that.”
“As you know, a friend of mine lives in that condominium complex,” Luke said, choosing his words carefully. Wong was aware of what was happening with him and Claire, but no one else had to.
“Fancy digs,” Lindi said.
“And you say she’s a friend?” Cam smirked. “That’s not your usual modus operandi.”
Funny. “I’ve known her since college. She has some personal stuff happening right now and I’m going to be staying with her a bit.” He’d filled in their sergeant on all the pertinent details, including Donald’s behavior, and he’d been honest and up-front when Wong asked if he was sleeping with her. The others could speculate all they wanted, but they didn’t need the same level of detail. “This gives us the perfect opportunity to set up surveillance on the interior of the Phong condo. We can see everyone who comes and goes, and if he shows up, we’ll know it. If we’re lucky enough to see him with his phone, we go in.”
“Once he’s there, we won’t need luck,” Cam said. “I’m already set up to route some communication to his phone through a server in Vietnam. If he responds, we’ve got him.”
“We’ve managed to get into an empty suite two floors down,” Jason told them. “We’ll have Derek and Patsy there along with a couple guys from SWAT at all times. They’ll make sure we get access to the penthouse when we need it.”
“So Luke’s friend,” Patsy said. “You’ve brought her in on this? Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“No, we haven’t,” Jason said. “Luke and I talked it over and decided against it. He’s moving in this afternoon and setting up a telescope on a tripod. Pretty standard for a lot of those places. People like to check out the boats in the sound, do a little whale watching. The telescope can be swivelled around to look at anything. The camera’s built into the tripod itself, so it’ll be stationary and aimed at the penthouse twenty-four-seven. Cam’s got his IT guys working on it right now.”
Derek grinned. “Watch out, bad guys.”
“We are good,” Lindi said. “I could use something like that to keep an eye on my girls when I’m not around.”
“See me after the meeting,” Cam said to her. “I’ll get you set up.”
That got a laugh from everyone.
As always, Jason allowed them a moment of good-natured camaraderie before reining them in. “To summarize, we’ll have Luke in the penthouse, Lindi and Cam monitoring the footage we get from the camera, and Derek and Patsy ready to move in. There’s a good possibility that some of Phong’s girls don’t speak much English, if any. It’ll be good to have a woman in there, especially one who can communicate with them. The plan is to have everything and everyone in place by early this evening. Let’s hope our guy doesn’t keep us waiting.”
“So Luke doesn’t get to swing from the side of the building on the window-washing platform?” Lindi asked.
The question had Jason grinning. “’Fraid not. Now that we have a better option in place, it’s too risky. Right now, at least as far as we know, we’re flying under their radar and we want to keep it that way. Phong and his boys might think it’s more than a coincidence that we have a crew gawking through their windows, so I’ve pulled the window-washing crew off the site.”
“Damn.” Cam smacked his palms together. “I was looking forward to seeing him up there.”
“Maybe next time,” Luke said. “Or maybe you’ll draw that straw.”
“Me and heights?” Cam said. “No way. I can’t even stand on a stepladder to change a lightbulb.”
“But you’re okay with it being me.”
“Oh, I have no problem with that.”
Luke laughed along with the others. Cam liked to give everyone a hard time but when push came to shove, he had everyone’s back. Luke hadn’t actually minded the assignment. After all, it’s what had reconnected him with Claire. Now he had an even better vantage point, not to mention a nice big bed and a beautiful woman to share it with. Call it fate or karma or just plain luck, things could not have worked out better.
As soon as the meeting broke up, Luke assured his boss he’d be back to pick up the surveillance equipment, then excused himself and made his way out to the front desk, hoping Kate Bradshaw would be there.
His luck was holding.
“Hey, Luke. Good you’re here. I have something to show you.”
“Am I going to like it?” he asked.
“Not even a little bit.” She opened a drawer, pulled out a folder and handed it to him.
Luke flipped it open and scanned the sheet. A couple of speeding tickets, one DUI, for which some fancy lawyer got him an acquittal, and... Shit. A restraining order filed by a former girlfriend, and one charge of sexual misconduct, brought about by an employee who later dropped the charges. Luke usually liked knowing his instincts were bang on, but this was different. If it was just Donald, yeah, he’d be smug as hell. But this was about Claire, and given the guy’s behavior, any self-righteousness Luke might have indulged in was eroded by concern. The guy was a piece of work, and he’d bet anything that Claire wasn’t aware of any of this.
“Thanks, Kate. I owe you one.”
She grinned. “I’ll add it to your tab.”
“So how’s it going?” he asked, figuring he owed her a little small talk after all she’d done for him. She had been paired up with him right after she graduated the academy, and they’d hit it off. He’d even toyed with the idea of asking her out, and he’d been pretty sure she would have said yes. In the end he’d decided it best not to complicate things, and now thanked his lucky stars he’d had the good sense and good judgment to keep things professional.
“Everything’s going great,” she said. “This is my last shift on the desk. After my days off, I’ll be back on the street.”
Good cops hated paperwork, so it was a positive sign that she didn’t like working the desk. “Give me a shout when you’re back on the job. If our investigation is still ongoing—” Although he hoped to God it would be wrapped by then. He was ready for something new, and he hated the idea of deceiving Claire any longer than absolutely necessary. “If it is, I’ll talk to Wong about finding a place for you. If not on this op, then maybe the next.”
Her eyes brightened, exactly the reaction he was looking for. “Really? Thanks, Luke. That’d be great.”
“Happy to do it.” He folded the report she’d printed for him, stuck it in his back pocket and handed the file folder back to her. “Thanks again for this.”
He didn’t like most of what was in it, but he was more certain than ever that being at Claire’s was the right place to be. He’d be a happy man once the investigation wrapped up and he could come clean about one of his reasons for wanting to be there. Meanwhile they would deal with Donald. And maybe, just maybe, Luke and Claire would figure out where this thing between them was going. He still didn’t know exactly how he felt about her, but he damn sure wanted to stick around and figure it out.
Chapter Nine
It took Claire and Kristi less than half an hour to do a quick tour of the apartment, take photographs and make notes. They decided to use a vibrant shade of cranberry for their accent color, and settled on a time on Tuesday afternoon to shop for accessories.
“A few pillows, a vase, some nice tall tapers in those silver candlesticks,” Kristi said. “It’ll be perfect.”
“It will,” Claire agreed. “Thank you for this. I’m so bad at this sort of thing.”
“That’s why you have me.” Kristi gave her a hug. “Let’s go see what Sam’s up to. I’m ready to wrap up the work portion of the program and get on to the fun stuff.”
Claire had to admit that she was looking forward to it, too. She passed around bottled water from the fridge after they regrouped around the table, took a seat and turned her iPad back on.