Cold Blooded

by Toni Anderson

  She’d come here instead, drawn by memories and that aching sense of loneliness.

  Though Adrian had told her the place had been released by the police they hadn’t removed the crime scene tape from the front door yet.

  Pip wandered into the kitchen area and checked the freezer. Given Cindy’s nature and her profession, that was the most likely place her friend would store chemicals. No obvious baggies. Not even an open box of baking powder. A conservatory sat on the back of the house where Cindy’s mom had nurtured and raised many of the flowers that grew in the garden. It was Pip’s favorite spot in the place with its comfy rattan furniture and large lazy fans. The moon shone brightly and she didn’t bother with any more lights.

  The idea that this house was hers was unsettling. Pip shook her head. She couldn’t think about that right now. Once she’d taken care of Cindy’s funeral she’d think about what to do about everything. The houses. The vehicles. The money.

  Bigger questions loomed. What was Pip going to do with her life? Where did she want to work? What did she want to do?

  The obvious choice was getting another gig with a paper, but even the thought made her stomach knot.

  Don’t think about it. Concentrate on figuring out what happened to Cindy and honoring her. One step at a time.

  She was looking for a way to track down this drug dealer. She’d tell Kincaid the name Sally-Anne had dropped, but not until she’d squeezed as much information out of the grad students as possible. If Cindy did do drugs it was possible she had contacted the dealer somehow. Pip didn’t have access to Cindy’s cell phone but Cindy kept paper copies of her bills, a holdover from her father who was always worried what might happen if a company’s system glitched or the U.S. was hit by a massive EMP. She’d trace the phone numbers on the bills and see if any of them came back to unknown sources and she’d check those out. Without walking around the bluffs and getting her throat cut.

  She headed into Cindy’s dad’s old study with its dark polished wood and open fireplace. There was a TV and a green leather loveseat where Pip had once accidentally caught Cindy’s parents making out.

  She’d been mortified but they had barely been phased. She’d loved how in love they’d been even after thirty years together. It was a rare kind of love. A true kind of love.

  She wouldn’t settle for anything less. But doubted she’d find it.

  Maybe there was something wrong with her. Something fundamental. Something that made her essentially unlovable.

  Didn’t matter. Not important.

  She forced the thoughts out of her head and went to the filing cabinet in the far right corner and opened the drawer where Cindy kept the household bills. Cindy was such an organized neat freak there were folders for everything, clearly labeled, doubled up for both this house and the cottage. The phone bills were in order of date and Pip pulled the ones for the year so far, for the house, cottage and Cindy’s cell phone, and folded them and placed them in her purse.

  She glanced at an oil painting on the wall. Would Cindy have kept a stash of coke in her father’s safe? Had the investigators known it was there?

  Pip took the painting off the wall and keyed in the code. Cindy’s mom and dad’s wedding anniversary. Cindy hadn’t changed it.

  Inside were old passports and various official documents. Some rolls of cash and foreign currencies, and jewelry boxes full of Cindy’s mom’s diamonds. Pip shied away from the idea of owning these things. It was too big of an emotional burden. She moved aside some papers, and something big, black and lethal stared back at her.

  Cindy’s dad’s gun.

  Pip had totally forgotten he’d owned one. Cindy had bought a Glock for self-defense. She spent so much time alone at the cottage and walking to and from campus late at night she’d wanted something to make her feel safer.

  Pip hated guns.

  Being a crime reporter, she’d seen the damage they could and did inflict. Slowly she reached out and touched the cold metal of the barrel. Tentatively she reached inside and pulled the pistol out of the safe. It felt heavy and awkward and she needed two hands to hold it steady.

  Since the Booker shooting she’d had several threats to her life. She was positive some of them came from Booker’s fellow cops. Lack of confidence in the local police department’s willingness to help her should she be attacked had been one of the key factors in play when she’d decided to leave Tallahassee.

  She turned the weapon over and ran a finger over “Remington” stamped on the metal.

  She had no training. She didn’t even know how to load the thing. But she was gonna learn she decided, straightening her spine. She was gonna learn how to defend herself. She slipped it into her purse, along with a box of bullets. They were heavy suckers. She’d find a gun range and pay someone to teach her how to shoot.

  Agent Kincaid’s cynical smile flashed through her mind. He’d probably advise her to avoid danger by keeping her nose out of other people’s business. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t rest until she figured out why a woman who’d just finished a four-year project that she’d been dedicated to had immediately snorted coke and died.

  Pip closed the safe and replaced the painting. Were the cops even looking for the drug dealer? From what Kincaid had said, she assumed so, but the Feds seemed more worried about the potential threat of the disease Cindy had worked on, rather than what had killed her.

  Did they think Cindy had brought anthrax home? Or maybe they were worried she’d inadvertently carried it here on her clothes?

  Pip knew the precautions Cindy took in the lab. It didn’t make any sense.

  Or, more likely, the powers-that-be had established sweeping new regulations that covered all Category A agents. Blanket procedures for everything from anthrax to Ebola.

  Pip wandered through the kitchen, to the hallway. A formal lounge sat off to the right. Used at Christmas and Thanksgiving and if the family was entertaining. Pip was pretty sure the only person who’d been in there since the wake was the Resnicks’ longtime cleaner.

  God, she now had a cleaner. No way could she fire the woman.

  She went to the front door and fingered the mail. Bills and flyers. Her bills now, she realized. Perspiration broke out on her forehead. She wasn’t used to such responsibility. Hated getting into debt or buying things on credit—hence the poor state of her car.

  She squeezed her hands into fists. The Resnicks would want things handled properly. Affairs sorted. Bills paid. She would do that for them.

  She headed up the wide staircase to Cindy’s room. Unlike at the cottage, Cindy hadn’t moved into the master bedroom here, preferring her own large girlhood room down the hall. She’d redecorated it a deep green with flowery watercolors on the walls.

  Pip hung on the doorframe and flicked on the light.

  The image of Cindy sitting on that double bed hit hard and fast as a prison shiv. Pip forced herself to step inside. Cindy used to keep a journal and although Pip didn’t want to pry she really wanted to know if she’d missed anything important.

  You don’t know everything.

  The words ran round and round inside her mind on a loop. What was it she didn’t know?

  She opened Cindy’s bedside table. There was her journal for last year but not this one. It was probably at the cottage. She put her hand on the hardcover and then picked it up even though she didn’t want to. The answer might be in this book, but the idea of snooping into Cindy’s innermost secrets…?

  Pip wasn’t judgmental about sex, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to read Cindy’s most intimate innermost thoughts or any graphic details. Pip would never judge her. Considering where she came from? The idea was a joke. But what if she read things about herself she didn’t like? Her fingers clasped the journal tight. She needed to face the truth, whatever that truth was.

  The house creaked in the wind. Pip had never felt vulnerable here before but she’d never really been alone. She slipped the journal into her bag next to the reassuri
ng weight of the pistol.

  Pip went over to the chest of drawers and checked out the cork board resting against the wall.

  She searched through the photographs, most of which were dear and familiar. Many were of the two of them goofing around, or Cindy’s family. A postcard with a bare-chested cowboy was stuck to the center. Pip had sent it last month after a work trip to El Paso. Her throat hurt with the effort of holding back emotion.

  She would not cry.

  She pulled the postcard off the board to read what she’d written. Some stupid inane comment that she’d hoped would make her friend laugh.

  Behind the postcard was a picture of Cindy and a really good-looking dude. Dane.

  Could Cindy have gotten back with him? Pip tugged the photo free and tucked it into her bag along with the journal. She scanned the room for anything else.

  A book sat on the other bedside table. Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell.

  Not Cindy’s usual reading material.

  Pip walked over and picked it up. Some of the page corners were folded, a habit Pip abhorred, but Cindy preferred. She’d definitely been reading it.

  Pip flicked through it and saw a handwritten inscription in the front.

  “Dearest Cindy, I ‘do’ give a damn.” Signed with a love heart.

  The bookmark was from the Margaret Mitchell Museum downtown. Pip frowned and wondered who had given it to her friend. Cindy was a romantic at heart. She’d wanted happily-ever-afters, not the rather bleak ending of this particular novel. Bitterness and anger threatened to well up inside Pip and expanded through her chest and wanted to spill out of her mouth because her friend would never get her happy ending now and it wasn’t fair.

  Pip flicked through the pages for more clues as to who’d given it to her. Nothing.

  Pip couldn’t see Dane giving it to Cindy but what did she know about the guy? Not a lot. Pete might. He was pretentious enough and arrogant enough to try and worm his way back into Cindy’s good graces even though Cindy would never forgive infidelity.

  Someone else? Someone new and exciting?

  Agent Kincaid’s handsome face flashed through her brain again.

  Federal agent! Not new or exciting, just annoyingly handsome.

  Pip laid the book down on the table and turned around to leave. She needed to track down this Hanzo character, but not alone at night. She’d speak to Dane Garnett tomorrow—see if he or the drug dealer drove a black SUV. She had a clear plan and it made her feel better, gave her renewed purpose. Maybe now she could sleep.

  The creak of a door hinge downstairs had her heart catapulting into her throat. She edged to the doorway and flicked out the light. Was that a footstep downstairs? Dread shot through her. Had she forgotten to lock the door when she came in?

  She couldn’t remember.

  She listened harder, heart thumping so violently against her ribs she felt physically winded. There were no other sounds. She stayed still and counted to a hundred. No footsteps, no doors opening or closing. Nothing moved. Maybe it was a draft catching one of the interior doors?

  Okay. She released a big breath of relief.

  It was her overactive imagination and a big dose of paranoia giving her the heebie jeebies.

  Still she pulled her cell from her pocket and dialed the first two digits of the emergency services. She crept carefully out of the bedroom and inched silently along the hallway. Shadows danced over the walls as the wind rustled the bushes and trees outside.

  She was being a chicken, but she couldn’t shake the sensation she wasn’t alone. The shadows seemed sentient and the sensation of being watched crawled over her skin. She reached for the handgun in her purse, fingers curling around the grip as she pulled it out.

  Armed with the gun and her cell she checked the front door, locked it, deciding to go out through the kitchen, the closest exit to where she’d parked her car near the double garage at the back of the house. She slipped on her sneakers.

  Determined to be brave she turned off the lamp and headed along the corridor toward the kitchen. She could see easily enough and knew her way. She’d arm the alarm on the way out just in case any burglars got the bright idea of robbing the place while it was empty.

  The only warning she got that she truly wasn’t alone was a quick brush of air before she was caught around the waist, the attacker’s arm trapping her left hand to her side. He grabbed her right hand jerking it upward, the gun coming out of her grip before he twisted her arm behind her back and shoved her into the nearest wall.

  And it was very definitely a “he” attacking her.

  She screamed as terror rushed over her. She didn’t want to die.

  Chapter Twelve

  Hunt stood in semi-darkness holding onto a wriggling mass of terrified female who seemed determined to pierce his eardrums with her vocal cords. At least she hadn’t blown his brains out.

  “Ms. West. Pip. Pip! It’s okay.” He relaxed his grip on her arm, trying to reassure her. His other arm was still around her waist and his fingers hit bare skin which scalded his hand like a naked flame. “It’s Agent Kincaid.” He carefully released her, but kept hold of her gun. Just in case.

  She stumbled away and turned to face him. “Kincaid? Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” Her hand went to her chest. “You scared me to death. I could have shot you.”

  She was sucking in air like an asthmatic and he belatedly remembered the panic attack she’d had that morning. It had been a hell of a long day.

  “What are you doing creeping around?” she asked.

  “I wanted to take another quick look at the house before the scene was released.” He lived in Ansley Park just south of this Sherwood Forest neighborhood and knew it would likely be his last chance.

  “In the dark?”

  He grimaced. “It’s bright enough to see you scowling at me.”

  “You could be completely blind and know I’m scowling at you,” she snapped.

  He suppressed a smile. It was getting harder and harder to maintain his dislike of her even though he wasn’t sure of her motives. “There was a light on in the hallway when I arrived. I had the light on in the study but I didn’t know anyone else was in the house. Where’re you parked?”

  She shifted the bag she had draped across her body and nodded toward the back of the house. “By the garage where I always park.”

  After his run with Will—and the quick beer Will had paid for—Hunt had received a message from his contact at CDC. Dr. Jez Place had wanted to give him Cindy Resnick’s autopsy photographs. All biological evidence had been sent to the FBI’s lab at Quantico for storage. Jez had also given him the house keys for this place along with Hunt’s promise to return them to their rightful owner—Pip.

  “What were you looking for in the study?” Her voice was all breathy. He knew he’d given her a scare. She’d nearly given him heart failure when he’d seen a figure walking past him carrying a gun.

  He flicked on a light switch behind him hoping to dispel the sense of intimacy that was developing between them. She blinked at the brightness, all tousled and disheveled as if she’d just climbed out of bed.

  Should have left the lights off.

  “I was looking for a copy of Cindy’s thesis.” He figured he’d at least try and read the introduction and discussion sections to get a grip on the science behind it. He wasn’t a total moron. He had a degree in engineering.

  “Did you find one?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I could have shot you,” she said quietly.

  He checked the older model handgun he held in his hands. “Not unless you turned off the safety and added a few bullets.”

  Her expression fell. “I don’t know how. I don’t know anything about guns,” she admitted. Her shoulders slumped. “I could have killed you by accident as much by design.”

  “You’d probably have got away with self-defense too, except for the fact this scene is still sealed off.”

  She set her jaw in w
hat Hunt was coming to recognize as imminent stubbornness. “Cindy’s lawyer told me the scene had been released.”

  He checked his watch. “In another thirty minutes or so, he’d be right.”

  “Well maybe you should give me the gun back and I’ll just wait for half an hour.” She sounded pissed again.

  He hid his smile. “Did you just threaten a federal agent?”

  He was pretty sure she growled. “Gonna arrest me?” She thankfully realized he was kidding as there was a trace of humor in her voice.

  “Where’d you get the 1911?” he asked, turning the piece over in his hands. Looked old.

  “The what?”

  “The weapon.”

  “It’s Cindy’s dad’s.” The corners of Pip’s mouth turned down. She looked tired.

  He wondered if Cindy’s dad had been in the Army.

  “I found it in the safe.”

  He glanced at her sharply. “Safe?”

  “You want to take a look in the safe?” she guessed.

  “You offering?”

  She huffed out a laugh. “Seems to me you still have twenty-nine minutes of federal authority left. I’d make you order me to but I resent being bossed around.”

  “I noticed.” He sent her a wry smile.

  “You prefer submissive women?” Her cheeks burned red as her words took on other meanings. “I didn’t mean—”

  He barked out a laugh. “Forget it. I like many different kinds of women.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  He squeezed the bridge of his nose. Now he’d made himself sound like a manwhore, and from her expression she wasn’t impressed. She started walking through the house, turning on all the lights along the way.

  He purposely kept his eyes off her very ripe ass.

  He did like different kinds of women, and never ventured beyond superficial relationship territory. Sex and fun times. No sticky emotions.

  So maybe he was a manwhore.

  He certainly wasn’t ready to settle down. He wasn’t sure he was built for serious relationships. He’d seen what his mother had gone through when his dad had been murdered. He knew what he’d suffered as a child without a father and as a young man losing his step-sister.