A fine way to start a working relationship.
“Black, meet our newest recruit. Linn Nichols, this is Investigator Kellan Black, known to the criminal underworld as Dean.”
KELL LOOKED DOWN at the woman who had just seduced Rick O’Reilly into revealing not only his current phone number, but gotten a few hints about his source, as well. If he hadn’t watched her in action himself, he’d never have believed it possible. She’d morphed from a degenerate sex goddess back into a tight-lipped Linda Fiorentino, and was now giving him the once-over as coolly as if she hadn’t all but made him—or was it O’Reilly?—an offer he couldn’t refuse only moments before.
“Hello.” He extended a hand and took hers. Cool fingers. Naturally. She probably had a body temperature of eighty degrees. “Nice work in there.”
“Thanks,” she said without a trace of that husky purr. He was having a hard time reconciling the sex kitten who had stretched out along the table as if she were about to climb all over a man’s body with this unflappable-looking woman in a standard-issue navy jacket, white T-shirt, and jeans so clean they probably hadn’t seen the street yet. Her dark-brown hair was pulled back into some kind of braid, but fine wisps blew gently in the gale of the air-conditioning vent above his cubicle. She met his eyes and waited for him to speak.
Her eyes were spectacular, huge and blue and long-lashed. With a little makeup, those eyes could belong to the voice he’d heard on the tape. But he had a feeling makeup was as foreign to her skin as seduction was to her voice.
Or maybe she had multiple personalities and had somehow managed to sneak past the psych screen and the background checks.
“I’ve got a meeting to get to,” the lieutenant said. “I’ve told Linn here you’re heading up the case. Come up with a game plan in case something goes wrong this afternoon.” He hustled out, perpetually overcommitted, leaving Kellan with the woman and no idea where to start.
“Have a seat.” He indicated a chair in the corner of the cubicle, next to a coat tree he never used. “How long have you been with us?”
She sat slowly, her back ramrod straight. “A little over three weeks.” So that meant she had five months to go in her probationary period. Some of the rookies didn’t even last that long.
“Look, Investigator—” she began.
“Kellan. Kell if you’re in a hurry. Black if you’re mad at me, which the lieutenant sometimes is. And Dean if you’re in the market for coke, or out working with me.” He tried on a grin, just to see if she’d loosen up, but she didn’t.
“Kellan.” She said his name with precision, no chummy abbreviations, with the barest trace of some kind of accent on the e. He wondered where that had come from. Then again, a few minutes ago he would have bet hard cash that she was British. A very posh Brit, used to winter holidays on the Mexican Riviera with drug kingpins who owned lovely houses.
“I need to explain something.”
He’d known her for less than thirty seconds. What needed explaining? Well, except maybe for—
“I don’t want you to think that my performance in there was my typical method of operation.”
He grinned. So he’d been right. “I should be so lucky.”
If he expected an answering smile and a little on-the-job camaraderie, he was wrong. Her eyes turned cold. Briefly he wondered what it would take to heat them up to the temperature they’d been when she was on the phone. She was either one hell of an actress or Tricky Ricky had managed to turn her on.
Don’t even go there.
“This isn’t a joke, Kellan. I expect to be treated the way you’d treat any member of your team, and I don’t want any fallout from the guys because of the activities I’m directed to perform.”
He slumped in his swivel chair and regarded her with a frown, resolutely slapping away a mental list of several activities he might perform with the woman in the glass room. Who definitely was not the woman who sat in front of him now and who was making that fact painfully clear.
“You think I’m going to treat you like a slut because you can act like one?”
She actually winced. Maybe there was a little stiff-upper-lip Brit in there after all.
“I’d prefer to avoid that.”
“I think you underestimate me. You’re a damned fine actress. You got Tricky Ricky on tape admitting to possession with intent to distribute. You practically had him masturbating in under three minutes, so I have nothing but admiration for your skills.”
She got up, planted both hands flat on his desk and leaned over him. Heroically, he tried to resist sneaking a peek at her breasts as they swelled in his immediate field of view.
Tried, and failed. Under the white cotton and navy-blue nylon, the lady was anything but buttoned-down. If anyone appreciated a woman with dangerous curves, it was he. Besides, she’d checked out his package not ten minutes ago, hadn’t she? Fair was fair.
The expression in her eyes, when he looked up to meet it a split second too late, had gone from cold to glacial.
“That, Investigator Black, is exactly what I’m talking about. If it turns out you need me to be The Girl—” she infused the words with scorn “—in this investigation, I’ll do it on one condition. Respect. Unless, of course, you enjoy defending yourself on harassment charges.”
She turned on her heel and left the cube.
Kell pushed himself out of his chair to watch her go, half expecting the office plants to wilt in her wake.
In the bullpen around him, activity had ground to a stop. Even the phones were quiet. The members of the coke team who weren’t out chasing Rick O’Reilly stared at him.
He gave them an annoyed glare. “She wants respect, she earns it, just like anybody else around here.”
Nobody responded, staring with complete fascination at their computer screens, or shuffling papers from one side of the desk to the other.
Kellan shook his head. “Thanks for the backup. Don’t you have a bad guy to chase?”
2
LINN PULLED ON A GRAY T-shirt and briefly considered putting a denim jacket over it, then discarded it as too informal. Too approachable. She shrugged into a hip-length black leather coat that went everywhere—even to court, in a pinch—and yanked on plain white socks.
She’d started off on the wrong foot yesterday, despite her success at getting Rick O’Reilly to spill his phone number. Somehow she’d allowed Kellan Black to wriggle past her guard, and he’d unerringly found a way to lodge like a burr, irritating the heck out of her.
No. That wasn’t it.
The truth was, Kellan Black wasn’t irritating. He was overwhelming. She was a respectable five foot eight, which was two inches taller than the regulation height for female recruits, but he probably stood six-three in bare feet—more, with those motorcycle boots. And it wasn’t just that. Every inch of him was packed with sex appeal and testosterone. No wonder she’d retreated into ice-queen mode when he’d smiled at her.
That smile was carnal knowledge and dark secrets and sin. A woman couldn’t help but think of climbing over the desk and into the lap of a man who smiled like that, which of course would be a very bad thing if she were looking for the respect of her team.
And he had no business ogling her as if she were a double-scoop sundae and he held a spoon. She squelched the little prickle of pleasure at the memory of the appreciation—no, the downright hunger—in those dark eyes. Thank God she’d worn a practical bra that had hidden the way her nipples had hardened in response. All she needed was to have him know she was attracted to him. He probably had women throwing themselves at him all the time, not to mention a semipermanent one installed at home, as well.
She’d worked hard to get here and wasn’t about to jeopardize a career-making opportunity because her team lead looked at her and liked what he saw. She’d spent more months than she cared to think about swimming in the scum-infested waters of California’s inner cities, making little marijuana buys and watching her targets go free practically as soon
as she charged them. She’d been the only woman in the Santa Rita PD to make her way up the chain of command in the Vetten organization and figure out that Dougie Vetten was bringing his product in to a local marina in pleasure boats. And she’d been the one to arrest him.
Dougie Vetten was the reason she’d been tapped for CLEU, which harvested the best investigators from departments all over the state to take on the criminals everyone thought were untouchable. She was not going to fail now that she’d reached the big time. She was going to work hard, keep her mouth shut and prove to them all that seducing drug dealers into revealing information was a very small part of her working day. No problem.
Right.
At eight o’clock on the dot she walked into the bullpen. Half a dozen surveillance reports still needed to be translated from notes in her notebook to the State’s green-and-white forms. She’d been invited to speak to the Silicon Valley Women’s Club, so a thirty-minute speech needed to be written and then approved by the Community Relations officer. The tape of yesterday’s call had to be sent downstairs for transcription—now there was something for the bug squad’s girls to talk about besides the other investigators—and her in box was full of filing that she hadn’t gotten around to yet.
With any luck, Kellan and the others had been able to follow Rick O’Reilly yesterday. Get some new names on his associate list. In a perfect world, these would lead them to the person he was getting his product from. And then she’d never have to see him again except when she testified against him in court.
A new poster on the bulletin board caught her eye as she walked toward her cube. In twenty-four-point letters it shouted:
BLACK VS. NICHOLLS
SUDDEN-DEATH SMACKDOWN
TICKETS AVAILABLE IN CUBE W24
GET ’EM WHILE THEY’RE HOT
Cube W24, of course, was Kellan Black’s. Linn sighed and debated whether to correct the misspelling of her name in red felt pen and leave the poster there, or to rip it down and tear it to confetti. In the end she merely pulled out the tack that held the poster to the corkboard, folded the paper neatly in thirds and deposited it in the trash.
As she did so, she saw the heads of her teammates doing the gopher thing above their cubes.
“Sorry, boys, the main event’s canceled due to lack of interest,” she said in a pretty good imitation of a cheerful person, and sat down to work.
When Black himself finally appeared at eighteen minutes to nine, she became very engrossed in the details of Wednesday’s surveillance. So engrossed, in fact, that she barely noticed him standing in the door of her space until he spoke.
“He gave us the slip again.”
She looked up. “What?”
God, he was big. Big and built and mouthwatering. And all this before he’d probably even had a cup of coffee.
“He disappeared.”
Big and built and totally pissed off. “Good morning to you, too. Who did?”
“Tricky Ricky. Try to keep up.”
She clenched her molars and bit back the retort he was obviously spoiling for. She understood. He’d lost his target. After all the work they’d done—setting up the call, recording it, locating him—it was disappointing. But there was no need to take it out on her.
“When we got to his location, he was gone. And, of course, the subscriber address on the phone record was a fake.”
Without permission, he came in and settled one hip on the corner of her desk. She hoped the modular unit would hold. Then again, it might be fun to see him dumped on his ever-so-sexy butt. He pulled his Get a CLEU cap off and slapped it against his palm. That was no way to treat a cap. If he was going to abuse it, he could give it to her.
“It means I’m back out on the street, hobnobbing with the cream of the underworld society.” His tone was even. He was obviously trying hard to put a damper on his temper and be civil. “But we do have a lead.”
“I thought you said the address was fake. Did you get something else?”
Slap. “No. You. The Dominion Hotel. Saturday night at nine, remember?”
The breath left her lungs as though an invisible pair of hands had sandwiched her between them and squeezed the air out. She’d forgotten all about her “date.” She’d been concentrating more on Kellan Black and his long-lashed brown eyes during that part of her conversation with Ricky, and this was what it got her.
“You’re our only hard lead,” he went on. “You get to be The Girl again, which I know you’re going to enjoy. If you do the meet, we can follow him back to wherever he’s hiding now. Open and shut. A couple of hours of work and we’re done.”
“That was the plan yesterday.”
He shook his head and grinned, but she could swear that behind it he was gritting his teeth. “Ah, but now we have the benefit of your skill and experience. I’ll brief you so you know everything Dean’s girlfriend would be expected to know. Such as my favorite color. What I like you to cook for me. How good I am in bed. Stuff like that.”
She kept her face expressionless and refused to respond. “And where will you be while I’m having drinks with him?”
“We’ll have to talk that over with the team. Maybe I’ll come into the bar and play the jealous boyfriend. O’Reilly already feels he has to compete with me in business. I outsmarted him on some pricing, and he’s still pissed about it. Maybe I’ll push him some.”
So she’d been partly right. That note in O’Reilly’s voice hadn’t meant that Dean’s opinion was important to him; he saw him as a viable competitor, which was good for Dean’s rep as a buyer.
“We need to get to his source, and I’m hoping that’s the trump card he’ll play on me.” Kellan got up and crossed to the gap in the fabric walls that constituted a door. “I’ll let you know at the briefing.”
One hand on the doorjamb, he turned back as if something had just occurred to him. “You’ve got clothes and stuff, right? He’s expecting a hottie, so you’ll have to ditch the jeans. He likes bad girls in red, remember?”
He tossed a grin over his shoulder, pulled his cap on and sauntered off down the hall.
A bad girl in red. Something else she’d blanked out while she’d been propositioning Rick O’Reilly and gawking at Kellan Black. Lord only knew what the next obnoxious bulletin-board poster would say once that got around.
She wasn’t sure she could prepare herself mentally to play a bad girl. A few minutes were one thing. A whole evening convincing some scumball that she wanted to go to bed with him was quite another. That, and dealing with Jealous Guy, who she would bet her next paycheck would play it to the hilt. The whole meet could blow up in her face, and take her career with it.
Although, she admitted deep in that dark place inside that gave her a jolt of sexual energy every time Kellan Black smiled, driving a man like him to jealousy—even if it were pretend—might be fun.
The cover team wanted the main event, did they? Thought they had her all figured out?
Come on, boys. It’s show time.
“‘HE LIKES BAD GIRLS IN RED’? Why don’t you just wave a red flag in front of the EEOC?” Cooper Maxwell stretched his legs under Kellan’s desk and folded his arms. “Not paying attention again in diversity class, were we?”
Kellan hadn’t meant to badger the woman, but damn, he was up against it. “Get out of my chair.” Cooper obligingly moved to the guest chair. Kellan dropped into his own and leaned his elbows on the paper on his desk. “What am I going to do? I can waste another week hanging out in seedy bars and chasing cockroaches through apartment buildings, looking for O’Reilly, or I can use my one brilliant lead and go straight to him.”
The only problem was the brilliant lead. She was a member of his team in name only. He hadn’t chosen her the way he’d handpicked the rest of his guys—she’d been assigned to him because she was female and because CLEU had to comply with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s regulations, just like any other State entity.
“She seems kinda reluctant to ge
t into the spirit of the thing. Go with the flow. Enjoy the thrill of the chase and all that,” Cooper mused. “Then again, maybe she just has a healthy respect for her own life. I can remember a few times when the thrill of the chase had me staring down the barrel of an automatic.”
In his saner moments Kellan might be able to empathize. He’d messed up the odd investigation and earned the censure of everybody on the unit. But at least he was willing to get out there and do what he could to beat back the tide of drugs rolling onto the shores of the continent, thanks to lowlifes like Rick O’Reilly.
“I don’t care.” His tone was blunt. “I have a job to do, and by God, I’m going to do it, even if it means partnering an EEOC princess with a split personality.”
Coop grinned. “And some personality it is, too. If you come in tomorrow with your rocks frozen off, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
His buddy sauntered back to his desk, leaving Kellan to stare sightlessly at the mess on his own. Linn Nichols wasn’t the kind of woman he cared to spend time with, but he’d be curious to know what it took to make personality number two come out to play. Kellan kicked back in his chair and propped his boots on the desk. Did the luscious Caroline show herself on weekends, or only under pressure, when Linn was backed into a corner and had to get creative?
And most intriguing of all, was she made up, just an act, or a part of Linn’s inner self, kept carefully locked up under “I’m not a woman, I’m a drone” clothes?
Kellan shook his head and pulled his keyboard onto his knee. He had to stop thinking about his co-worker’s personal life and habits. Fraternizing with someone on your own team was a bad idea. It got too uncomfortable when relationships fizzled and you still had to see the person every day. It was a lot safer to have a quick fling with the out-of-town operators. Everybody knew the ropes. A couple of nights of fun, then drive her to the airport, no hard feelings.
His Hot Number Page 2