Harlequin Intrigue May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  “Don’t have any condoms with me,” he growled, and steered her toward the staircase.

  It was awfully hard to climb with his hands all over her, but from the sound of his breathing, the impact wasn’t one-way.

  Naturally, his bedroom was the last at the end of the hall, but they made it. They were barely beside his bed when Jack yanked back the covers and started stripping her even as she tried to pull up his sweatshirt and then unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans. He swore, clothes tangled with their limbs, and they finally made it into bed, naked.

  They kissed until her head spun. Jack seemed to know exactly how and where to touch her. His fingers slid from one sensitive spot to another. She was already arching when he released her mouth and slid lower to suckle her breasts.

  Gabby kneaded his chest and shoulders, frustrated at her inability to reach that iron bar pressed against her thigh. Why did she have to be so short?

  When he finally reached across her for the drawer in his bedside table, Gabby wrapped her fingers around him, squeezed and stroked and let him feel her fingernails. His hands were shaking as he put on the condom, and the heat in his eyes could have incinerated the sheets if his focus hadn’t been so intensely on her.

  The pleasure of joining was so powerful, she came with shocking speed. Jack drove her through the implosion and up again. There was nothing gentle or careful about this mating. That was not what she wanted, or what he needed. When he thrust a last time, hard, she came apart again. He collapsed on her, and Gabby didn’t care if she ever breathed again.

  * * *

  AFTER THE BEST night of his life, Jack had never felt so energized...and so maddened by his inability to make any progress at all toward solving Colleen Ortiz’s murder. It wasn’t even lunchtime, and he had already called Gabby, needing the reassurance of hearing her voice. The sense of urgency that drove him was like a deep-seated itch he couldn’t scratch, a just-heard drumbeat of warning.

  She should be safe, but his gut said she wasn’t.

  Ric called to say he would be released from the hospital tomorrow morning. Yeah, he still felt like crap, but he could hire a visiting health aide to help with anything he couldn’t manage. A couple of friends had invited him to recuperate at their homes, too. He hadn’t decided.

  Jack almost suggested Ric come to his place. He’d be company for Gabby. But something stopped him. He could be followed after picking up Ric, leaving the hospital and driving home. Ric was in no shape to get between his sister and another bullet, either.

  “I think you should take one of them up on the offer,” he said. “We’re making progress—” He turned his head to be sure no one could hear his end of the conversation. “Gabby is helping me with some research. I don’t like the idea of you alone in that house for now.”

  “You think I could be pressured to give away her whereabouts.”

  “We all have our breaking point.”

  A long pause. “I don’t think I’d rest easy at home, anyway. Not after everything that’s happened. Okay, I’ll do that. But you’ll stay in touch, won’t you?”

  “Count on it.”

  Jack ended the call and raked his fingers through his hair. Father Ambrose either didn’t have a cell phone, or the diocese had chosen not to hand out that number. What if he was taking a two week vacation in the Caribbean? Filling in for an ill padre far enough from home he couldn’t commute? He probably didn’t check his voice mail as incessantly as people of a younger generation did.

  Or didn’t he want to talk about Colleen Ortiz?

  Damn. Jack thought about calling the parish where Father Ambrose now lived and occasionally served to beg for someone to hunt him down.

  He glanced at his phone. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet. Give the poor guy a chance. Maybe he’d had a full morning. Maybe he was talking to Gabby right that minute.

  Nobody knew she was staying at his house, he reminded himself. Except Ric, of course. And Jack’s father. Hell. How many friends here in town had Dad stayed in touch with? He’d have no reason to tell anyone what had been happening with the cold case, would he?

  Jack’s one accomplishment this morning was eliminating Sergeant Rutkowski as a suspect. He’d been talking to another detective he sometimes paired with on big cases. Mary Springer mentioned having worked Friday and Saturday both. Jack asked who else had been here, and she told him their sergeant was.

  She’d grinned impishly. “His wife’s sister and her family were with them for the four days. He said a little of the sister goes a long way, so he was hiding out. Really, all four of us at the station probably were, for our own reasons. None of us stepped foot out of the office. We ordered out for a big lunch—not turkey—and enjoyed the peace and quiet.”

  Relief flooded Jack. He liked the sergeant and had hated suspecting him.

  Pinning down Chief Keller’s whereabouts was inevitably a bigger challenge. Several layers of command separated Jack from the police chief. Until he’d asked to open the cold case, he’d had very little personal interaction with the man. Occasionally Keller dropped by to talk to Rutkowski. Otherwise, Jack saw their police chief giving statements during news conferences on TV, just like everyone else.

  If the chief wanted to slip out, he had the advantage that the current city hall and police station were connected. He met frequently with the mayor or city council members. After all, Keller was a politician as much as anything, and probably spent half his time in those meetings.

  Jack was good at strategy, but he couldn’t figure out how to pin down where the police chief had been during fixed periods of time without sounding as if he was butting his nose in places it didn’t belong. About all Jack had learned through common gossip was that Keller had taken the full four-day weekend, which meant he could have been anywhere.

  What if he was upfront with Sergeant Rutkowski, who might be able to get answers to those questions without drawing unwanted notice?

  Even imagining what Rutkowski would say to one of his detectives suspecting the chief of police of being a rapist and murderer had Jack wincing. It might be different if he could present even a grain of real evidence. The fact that Keller had left Leclaire High School after his sophomore year even though his parents didn’t move away was damn suggestive timing. Add to that the fact that he’d stayed away until his father died, after which he immediately returned to Leclaire and took a job with LPD. As a puzzle piece, it dropped into place, cut to fit. But sure as hell, Dean Keller had told his story until it was completely believable.

  They needed Father Ambrose.

  Jack had run out of other strings to pull. The killer could well be someone he’d never considered, would have no way to identify. But his gut told him he was right. He just didn’t know what he could do next, short of sitting in the parking lot watching for Keller to leave and then following him—which wasn’t feasible.

  Thoughts spinning in circles, he walked down the block to the nearby deli to buy a sandwich he could eat at his desk. Unfortunately, neither the brief activity nor the icy air outside cleared his mind.

  He was stopped twice on his way in, once about another investigation, once by the patrol officer who’d handled the break-in at the Ortiz house and had just heard about the shooting. Jack filled him in on the continuing saga before taking the stairs rather than the elevator.

  He’d intended to have his third or fourth cup of coffee with the sandwich, but saw the pot in the bullpen was down to sludge and crossed the hall to use the pop machine in the break room. Cold can in hand, he heard voices in the hall. Chief Keller and Rutkowski, he realized. Not prepared to produce another even semiconvincing update, he lurked a few feet inside the break room where he could see Keller’s back blocking the detective bullpen doorway. His wait wasn’t long. The police chief abruptly turned away and headed down the hall toward the elevators.

  Feeling like a kid slinking around so Dad co
uldn’t assign him a new chore, Jack crossed the hall without wasting time. He could see the chief striding away, and made sure to duck back into the bullpen before Keller happened to glance back.

  At his desk, he started to unwrap his sandwich, but something niggled at him. Frowning, he turned to look toward the doorway to the hall. Had he ever seen Keller walk more than a few feet before? He had a distinctive stride—

  Jack’s phone rang, and his adrenaline spiked when he recognized the number.

  “Detective Cowan here,” he said. “Is this Father Ambrose?”

  “It is. Given the questions, I thought it best to call you rather than the young lady.” The priest had a strong voice that hadn’t lost anything to age.

  “Thank you. I don’t know how much Gabby told you in her message, but I’m hoping you remember her mother, Colleen Ortiz.”

  “I do because that was such a distressing and delicate situation. I’ve asked myself many times over the years whether I made the right decision. To find out that she was later murdered... If I’d had the least idea...”

  “I’m assuming what you learned is that she’d been raped.”

  “I wouldn’t be able to tell you what she said in the confessional if she were alive, but given what Colleen’s daughter said, I think I must.”

  “Colleen surely didn’t blame herself for the rape to the extent that she felt she had to confess.”

  “No, her guilt came from her lies to her parents about where she was going. She wasn’t a girl who did that kind of thing, but I gather she was completely infatuated with the boy. In the midst of telling me, she fell apart and it all came out. As...shattered as she was, she was absolutely determined not to go to the police. She already knew she wasn’t pregnant, and she couldn’t bear for her parents to know she’d been assaulted. She said that everyone would look at her differently, which is, regrettably, true. I had grave reservations about her thinking she could just put it behind her, but I couldn’t ignore her wishes.” The priest paused. “What a terrible thing to happen. Such a shock.” He sighed. “I didn’t know him or the family, since they didn’t worship at St. Stephen’s, but I had no difficulty locating them. I felt I was doing the right thing to take this to them. I don’t believe Colleen could have borne seeing the boy every day at school. My meeting with the parents wasn’t pleasant, of course. The mother was in complete denial, but his father agreed to withdraw him from the public school and send him to a boy’s school, a military academy. He promised not to allow him to return to Leclaire. I...had the feeling that he’d already had some suspicions about his son.”

  Jack knew. He knew. Handsome and charming classmate well able to tempt a good girl to lie to her parents to meet him illicitly.

  That rolling gait, the big, powerful body with a little softening around the middle told him enough.

  Jack pushed back his desk chair and surged to his feet. Harshly, he said, “Father Ambrose, who was the boy?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Dean Keller.

  Who’d just gotten into an elevator either to ride up a floor to his office...or down, to leave the building.

  Jack didn’t know what else he’d said to the priest. What if Keller had been leaving? Electrified by fear, he knew only that he had to go home. Be there to protect Gabby.

  He snatched his parka from the back of his chair and went straight to Rutkowski’s office, rapping on the glass and entering without waiting for an invitation.

  “Was Chief Keller going back up to his office?” Jack could only imagine what the sergeant saw on his face.

  That had to be why he barely hesitated. “I don’t know. You’d better have a good reason for asking.” He picked up his phone and pushed a couple of buttons to route his call to the chief’s office. “This is Rutkowski. The chief was just here. Is he back in his office yet?” Rutkowski’s dark eyes met Jack’s. “Thanks.” He dropped the receiver into the cradle. “He’s gone for the day.”

  “I think he murdered Colleen Ortiz, and I’m damn sure he’s trying to kill Gabby. I need to get home in case—”

  “She’s there?”

  “Yeah.” Jack’s voice was hoarse with fear. “I’ve got to go.”

  “I’m going with you.” The sergeant grabbed his holstered gun from a drawer, snapped it on his belt and swept up his coat on the way out of the office on Jack’s heels.

  Heads turned when the two men ran from the squad room and down the hall. Without discussion, they took the stairs two at a time. That saying about seeing your life pass before your eyes? Jack saw the life he wanted to have, complete with kids. The one he’d lose if he didn’t stop the son of a bitch out to kill her.

  Rutkowski leaped in on the passenger side of Jack’s assigned police vehicle, buckling himself in as tires squealed and Jack accelerated toward the exit. He had his lights and siren on by the time he swerved onto the street.

  “Explain.”

  Jack did, in a few short words. “I kept thinking I was crazy. He’s my boss. He’s a respected cop and has been chief for—”

  “Seven years.” The sergeant planted a hand on the dashboard as they rocketed through a yellow light.

  “You’re not arguing.” How long had it been since Keller left the station? Could he be at Jack’s house yet?

  “I had a few thoughts that made me uncomfortable. Got the feeling you weren’t telling us everything, either. Started wondering why that would be, and that brought back a memory of seeing Dean and Colleen together a few times in high school.”

  Jack fumbled his phone from his pocket and called Gabby.

  Ring. Ring. Ring. Went on and on.

  Rutkowski continued talking, but in his terror Jack had quit listening. A thought hit him and he called his father, putting his phone on speaker.

  “Jack?”

  “Did you tell anyone at all that Gabby is staying with me?”

  “Nobody you need to worry about,” his dad said, sounding surprised. “Your boss called me out of the blue last night, said you’d told him recently where I’d relocated to, and he was curious enough to decide to touch base. Hadn’t heard from him in twenty years or more, but I must have mentioned him before.”

  “No,” Jack said tersely. “I had no idea you knew him.”

  “After I was brought in for questioning about the Ortiz woman’s death, he was friendly. Went out of his way to talk me through what was happening and reassure me that the interest in me was routine. Nothing to worry about. Like I said, we talked four or five times over the next few years, but we didn’t have much in common.”

  “Did he ask where Gabby was staying?”

  “Why would he when he knew? He said something like, ‘Have to admire your boy for taking a witness home with him.’ Said he was pleased you’d reopened that investigation, mentioned that you were keeping him in the loop.” There was a silence Jack read as appalled. “You’re not suggesting—”

  Jack said a word he rarely used and cut his father off so he could redial Gabby.

  Still no answer.

  You’re too late, said a voice in his head.

  He wouldn’t accept it.

  * * *

  FEELING CHILLED, GABBY went upstairs to put on a sweater. While she was there, she used the bathroom. Washing her hands, she leaned closer to the mirror to study herself. Wow. Apparently, extreme stress had more impact on her appearance than all the happiness in the world could. Where was the glow Jack had claimed to see when she was able to tell him that Ric had regained consciousness and was going to be fine? Shouldn’t a night of astonishing sex with a man who hadn’t quite told her that he loved her, but had come really, really close be giving her a glow?

  Instead, her eyes were sunken and bruised-looking and her skin pasty. Maybe she should think about applying some makeup before Jack got home.

  As if he hadn’t already seen her this morning
.

  She made a face at herself, dried her hands and reached for her phone...only to realize she must have left it downstairs. Dumb. What if she’d missed Father Ambrose’s call? Or Ric had taken a downturn?

  She hurried toward the staircase and started down. The last place she’d been was the kitchen, where she’d rinsed out her coffee mug after who-knew-how-many refills. She could have set the phone down on the counter...

  The familiar ringtone came to her. She probably couldn’t reach it in time to catch the call, but—

  At the sound of glass breaking, she froze with one foot hovering in midair.

  That had to be at the back of the house, she thought, with a calm clarity that had separated itself from her panic. If she could get to her phone... But what if he was coming in the kitchen window?

  A strange rattling made her hesitate. Blinds. She could all but see a hand reaching in through a broken pane on the French doors that led from the dining room out to a deck. Jack had left the blinds closed, as he had on all the other windows.

  What if she ran for the kitchen, waited until she heard the intruder enter, and ran out the kitchen door? She might have a few seconds until the intruder realized that Jack had installed a sliding lock at the top of the French doors.

  Splintering wood gave her all the answer she needed. He’d kicked his way inside, and if she went that direction, she’d pass within sight of him.

  Upstairs. She felt her way backward with one foot before she overcame that instinctive need to mindlessly flee.

  A voice whispered, Wrong way.

  Already tiptoeing down the last few steps and rushing around the wall that framed the staircase and formed an alcove in the living room, she knew the voice was right. Upstairs, she’d be trapped. Worse yet, there was nowhere to hide. Jack was either a neat freak or just hadn’t collected much yet. Under the bed might work playing hide-and-seek with kids, but not for hiding from a killer.

  She could run for the front door, but unlocking the dead bolt would make noise. By the time she fled out onto the porch—if she got that far—he’d be on her. He could pump a couple of bullets into her back, go out the way he’d come and be long gone before anyone in a passing car noticed the woman’s body half-fallen down the front porch steps.