Don't Look Away (Veronica Sloan)

by Leslie A. Kelly

That word, jealous, bounced around in her head, stunning her with its bluntness and simplicity. That was as close to a confession of his true feelings for her that Sykes had ever uttered. To be honest, she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Except a little dazed.

  “Jealous?”

  “He’s used to getting what he wants, when he wants it.”

  “Well, he doesn’t want me, and he never will,” she mumbled, still not sure how to react. Knowing Sykes wanted to screw her was one thing. Jealousy added an emotional component to the whole thing, one she was nowhere near ready to deal with.

  “I know, I know, the bad-ass Veronica Sloan doesn’t want to deal with stuff like men who are interested in more than a quick lay.”

  She desperately needed to steer this conversation back onto safer territory, even if she had to play shallow to do it. “You mean it’d be quick? Aww, Sykes, you break my heart.”

  He didn’t even crack a smile, not the least bit distracted. “You’re going to have to deal with this sooner or later.”

  Playing shallow hadn’t worked. So she stuck with playing dumb. “With what?”

  “With what you feel about me.”

  Closing her eyes and trying to remember how to breathe, she replied, “What is it you think I feel about you, Sykes?”

  A tiny smile appeared. “You want me. But you don’t want to want me.”

  Well, he’d nailed that one right on the head.

  He wasn’t finished though. His smile faded as he went on. “You think being in an actual relationship will make you weak, so you don’t want to lower your guard and let me—or anyone—get close. You’re also worried about getting your mother’s happily-ever-after hopes up, afraid of looking weak, concerned about giving up control, utterly terrified about being hurt or experiencing tragic loss again. You’re even bothered about how it will affect your relationship with Daniels.”

  She couldn’t speak. It was as if Sykes had slipped inside her head, evaluated all the confusing thoughts and feelings she’d been having for the past few months, and summed them up into a few short sentences.

  “Am I getting warm?”

  “You’re on fire, you jerk,” she admitted, hearing her own voice crack as she let him get one step closer to knowing her—really knowing her, the way nobody else did.

  “Don’t panic, Veronica,” he ordered, reaching over and squeezing her hand. “I can be patient.”

  She remained stiff, not squeezing back, but not pulling away either.

  To her shock, he didn’t merely entwine their fingers, or offer her a reassuring pat. Instead, he actually lifted her hand. In the confining shadows of the car, she could barely make out his expression as he brought her fingers to his lips and pressed a soft kiss there.

  Oh, hell. She was doomed.

  That soft, quiet touch screamed his intentions louder than if he’d held a bullhorn. The gentle, easy brush of his lips on her knuckles had been as natural for him as breathing, as if he was already her lover, already knew how to touch her, how to please her, how to calm her.

  Nobody else did that. But, she’d realized in recent days, Sykes could. As easily as he could make her fume, he could deflate her anger and give her a sense of peace, a certainty that everything would be all right.

  He wasn’t demanding anything, merely underscoring his words, putting an exclamation point on his claim that he knew her. Really knew her…and wanted her just the same.

  Which was not only surprising, but utterly terrifying.

  But you don’t know everything, mister.

  He couldn’t possibly know what she really wanted or what she intended to do about it. How could he when she didn’t know that herself?

  She pulled her away from him, dropping her hand onto her lap and clenching the other one. “I should call Daniels, let him know what’s going on,” she said, knowing she sounded cold and terse. It was all she could manage right now. He’d given her too much to think about; she needed to retreat and regroup.

  His deep sigh expressed his disappointment in her, but she didn’t let that change her mind. She wasn’t ready to have this conversation. Maybe she never would be. So much for thinking she could just have sex with the man and get him out of her system. She greatly feared that doing what she’d wanted to for months—going to bed with him—would merely cement his position in the forefront of her life. And her heart.

  Forcing away all of those thoughts, she pulled out her phone and dialed Daniels’s number. She’d been out of touch with him all afternoon, and wanted to see what he’d found out. When they’d parted ways at the precinct earlier, after the Bailey interrogation, he’d had a long To-Do list. She was anxious to see what had been done.

  “Hey, partner, you heading home for the night?” he asked as soon as he answered.

  She quickly explained the situation, telling him she was in the car with Sykes, heading south. She only hoped her voice hadn’t changed, that she didn’t reveal that Jeremy had just rocked her world.

  “Oh,” he said, the tone growing frosty. “That sounds fun.”

  “If walking in on another scene like the one at the White House can be called fun? Sure, yeah, I’ll go with fun.”

  He had to have heard the bite of anger in her voice. “Sorry. When’d the guy buy it?”

  “Sometime around 7:30 this evening. Just a couple of hours ago.”

  “Well at least you’ll be on scene pretty quickly. How did everything else go today?”

  She went over what she’d done at the Tate lab, basically telling him she’d learned nothing and had been forced to endure yet another episode of the Leanne and Bailey horny-hour.

  “Tell me true,” he said, laughter in his voice, “did you have a hard time keeping your eyes above his belt when you were watching the interview today?”

  “You’re such a twelve-year-old boy.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I’m taking the fifth.” Because, to be honest, she had dropped her gaze once or twice, wondering where on earth that skinny, gawky kid hid that. “Now, tell me what you’ve been up to. How are things going with the rookie?”

  “I ditched him,” Daniels said, unrepentant. “He was slowing me down, asking a million questions, so I put him in the research lab pulling up old case files I have no interest in.”

  “Rule-breaker.”’

  “Takes one to know one, Ms. Hacker.”

  “Speaking of which, anything on that list of names?”

  “Yeah, I got some info back on two of the O.E.P. dudes who died recently.”

  “The natural causes deaths?”

  An inelegant snort told her that was a stretch. His words confirmed it. “If you call one of ‘em blowing his own head off after he’d killed his wife, and another leaping off a moving high speed train ‘natural causes,’ then I guess you could say that.”

  She gasped. Beside her, Sykes glanced over, raising a curious brow. She covered the mouthpiece of the phone and muttered, “Natural causes, my ass.”

  “Murder?”

  “Sounds like suicide, but you never know. Maybe they were just made to look that way.” She returned her attention to Daniels. “How’d you get the info?”

  “The Internet is a wondrous thing, my friend.”

  Oh. Right. A basic web search. Yeah, that’d work.

  “Sorry, I just didn’t have time to do it,” she said, feeling bad for having dumped the task on him when the answers had been found so easily. Well, at least regarding two of them.

  “I’m not done yet. I’ve printed off everything I’ve found on those guys, but I haven’t even really started digging into the rest. But believe me, I will.”

  “What about the list of the people who knew about the tunnels? Did you ever get it?”

  He cracked his gum into the phone. “Yep. Actually, I just left the White House. I’ve been over there for the past four or five hours. Got the list from Jack Williams, then talked to everybody on-site whose name was on it. After that, SSA Johanse
n went with me to poke around and see if we could dig up anything else.”

  “And?”

  He hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure whether to say anything or not.

  “What’d you find?”

  “Might be nothing,” he admitted. “Could have been something left behind by one of the construction workers.”

  Her curiosity rising, she said, “So what was it?”

  “Just a little key. It’s an unusual shape, I’m not really sure what it might fit.”

  Her heart began to beat faster. “Safety deposit box? A storage unit?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Any prints?”

  “I bagged it and will definitely find out.”

  “Sounds good,” she said.

  “Hey,” Sykes said, interrupting the conversation, “we’re low on gas. Think I’ll pull off. You hungry?”

  “Considering you cost me a half-pound of meat, yeah, I’d say I am,” she replied. Right after she’d heard from Sykes about the Richmond case, she’d bailed out on her dinner with Philip Tate. He had insisted on driving her home and hadn’t looked too heartbroken to leave the restaurant without eating the dinner they’d ordered.

  Through the phone, she heard Daniels grunt. “Sounds like you’re busy. We’ll touch base later.”

  The remark Sykes had made about her concerns regarding her partner, and how their relationship might be affected if she got involved with someone, reverberated in her ears. Jeez, dealing with these two was like walking a tightrope. Never having engaged emotionally with many men, she’d never had to deal with trying to balance someone’s feelings with her own desires.

  This—whatever this between her and Sykes ended up being—wouldn’t be easy.

  “Okay,” she said, watching as Sykes flipped on the turn signal and moved into the exit lane. “Turn right,” she told him, spying the sign of her favorite fast food joint.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sykes tossed off with a laugh.

  Daniels grunted again, obviously displeased at having half her attention.

  “I gotta go,” he said.

  “All right. Thanks for your help today.”

  “Help?” He sounded prickly, offended. “I’m doing my job, in case you forgot about it. I’m not an errand boy working for you and your FBI friend.”

  “I know that,” she said, wishing she’d chosen her words better. “I meant thank you for checking out those names I snagged off Tate’s computer. I know you don’t approve of how I got them.”

  “Doesn’t matter whether I approve or not, Ron,” he said, sounding a little appeased. “The fact is, something is up with that. I’ll bet my manga porn collection that I’m gonna find out the other four dead guys all bought it in very unnatural ways too.”

  She wasn’t going to take that bet. Not only because she had absolutely no interest in cartoon characters having sex, but because she strongly believed her partner was right.

  Disconnecting the call, she fell silent while Sykes pumped gas into the tank. She mumbled what she wanted when he pulled up to the drive-thru window of the fast food place, but remained pretty quiet for the rest of the drive down to Richmond, trying to figure out what she thought of all the things Sykes had said. And the things Daniels had not.

  She didn’t necessarily feel like part of any kind of triangle, since she knew that, deep down, Daniels loved her the way she did him—as a partner, a close friend, almost a sibling. But that didn’t mean she didn’t feel guilty as hell that her partner was feeling a little shoved aside by somebody Ronnie had the hots for.

  The hots? Get real. You know it’s more than that.

  Maybe. But she didn’t want to think about that.

  She turned up the radio to fill the silence and they finished the drive without speaking. It took longer than she and Sykes had expected—over two hours. The victim, Eddie Girardo, lived south of the city in a rural area near a state park, close to the North Carolina state line. She had sensed Sykes’s impatience as they’d sped down I-95, his hands gripping the steering wheel of the unmarked, FBI sedan, and had half-wished she had just agreed to take a chopper down, despite how queasy they made her.

  Finally, though, they arrived, spying the flashing lights of a half-dozen police and rescue vehicles that lit up the night on this dark, country road. The location had probably made it easier for the killer to take out his victim on a pretty summer evening, before it was even dark yet. Sykes had been told that Girardo’s data chip indicated he’d died at around seven-forty p.m. It hadn’t even been dark out yet and the murderer had been brazen enough to strike.

  They walked into the house, learning that the victim’s remains had not yet been removed. Fortunately, though, this case wasn’t nearly as brutal as Leanne Carr’s murder.

  Eddie Girardo had been a middle-aged, divorced father of four. His wife had remarried and moved with her kids to another part of the state, and, judging by the empty liquor bottles in the recycling bin, and the spilled alcohol on the floor near the corpse, his closest companions had been liquid rather than solid.

  Early reports said he was a loner, had few friends, and didn’t go anywhere except to his job at the Richmond federal building and back home. If it hadn’t been for a hiker spotting the back door swinging in the breeze, and a spot of blood on the hand-railing on the porch, they probably wouldn’t have found the man for days. Instead, he’d been discovered less than an hour after his murder.

  “So, you gonna explain to me why I had to stand here with my thumb up my ass, waiting for you two to show up, rather than actually doing my job and getting this poor son of a bitch out of here and into a body bag? Or two?” asked the lead detective, who’d greeted them at the door, briefed them and led them inside the house.

  Ronnie visibly bristled at the man’s tone, so Sykes stepped in to answer the question, courteous and professional as always. “I apologize, Detective Baranski. There’s not a whole lot I can tell you, except that this man’s murder is connected to an investigation of two other murders in the D.C. and Philadelphia areas.”

  “That why the FBI’s involved?” he asked. “Because it’s a multi-state thing?”

  “Something like that,” said Sykes.

  They stopped in the doorway that led from the foyer to a small hallway. Here, judging by the large pool of blood in the center of the floor, was where Mr. Girardo had fallen, and where part of him remained. The biggest part.

  Shuddering, Ronnie glanced toward the kitchen, which lay at the other end of the hallway. Even from here, she could see the open freezer door, marked by evidence flags and tape.

  The man’s head was inside, on the top shelf, placed between a container of ice cream and loaf of bread. Right in front of his mouth, pointing toward his lips, was a hot dog in a bun. It had been carefully placed there to look like the disembodied head was about to chow down.

  Ronnie bit back a grunt of disgust. “Looks like our boy’s playing games with food again.”

  Sykes nodded his agreement, adding, “I wonder if anything’s stuffed in his mouth.”

  Not walking down through the hall, where the murder had taken place, Sykes instead cut through the nearby dining room to get to the kitchen. Ronnie followed, watching as Sykes walked over to examine the freezer more closely. He leaned in, eye level with the late Mr. Girardo’s head, and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. Moving carefully, trying not to disturb anything, he pushed the victim’s lips apart and looked inside the dark, cavernous mouth.

  A tiny, green object fell out, rolling off the edge of the freezer and landing on the floor. Sykes flinched, jerking back and looking down at the thing, which had landed next to his foot.

  “It looks like a pea,” he said.

  “Do you think there’s some kind of message in that?”

  “No clue.” He gestured for a forensics technician to come over and bag the pea. “I’m sure a shrink would have a field day. Underwood with the cannoli, this guy with a hot dog pointing right at him and a pea between his
lips?”

  “Weird. But I would imagine it means something.”

  While the technician gathered the tiny bit of evidence, Detective Baranski came into the kitchen to watch. “Go ahead and bag the head so we can put it with the rest of the body,” he told the technician.

  “We don’t mean to rush you,” Sykes said, still playing nice. “We can wait a little while if you’re not ready to bag him yet.”

  “Wait for what?” the detective asked, his eyes narrowing. Judging by the way he held himself—the hunched shoulders, the clenched arms—he was prepared for a fight, and had come in here looking for it.

  “For you to finish whatever you need to do here before we leave with the head,” Sykes said pleasantly.

  She was reminded of that flies/honey/vinegar thing and found herself wishing for a flyswatter. She suspected they were going to need it.

  The detective’s face flamed and a vein popped in his forehead. “You’re not taking this guy anywhere.”

  “Perhaps you don’t understand, detective,” said Sykes, still somehow keeping his cool, though his tone displayed the barest hint of steel. “We are authorized to completely take over this crime scene and remove anything we want.”

  “Oh yeah? And are you authorized to take the shit-storm that’ll pour down on my head if I let you do it, and thereby ruin the case against the crazy nutjob who did this?”

  “Detective…”

  “Don’t even try talking me into it,” the barrel-chested man insisted, his brows drawn together in a violent frown. “You’re not taking it ‘til the M.E. examines it and signs off, which won’t be until morning.”

  “We can’t wait that long!” snapped Sykes, a little of that famous cool drifting away.

  “Tough. I’m the one whose ass will be on the line if this gets FUBAR. I’m the one who’ll have to go into a courtroom where some slick, high-priced lawyer will rip me a new one for releasing this guy’s head to two people who aren’t even in my jurisdiction, just because some damn chip in the vic’s arm says I’m supposed to.”

  Sykes was rapidly becoming furious, she could see the bunching of his muscular shoulders under his suit jacket. “You’re obstructing justice.”