by Maggie Price
Julia closed her eyes, her gloved fingertips resting on the dresser’s cool marble top. In every homicide case she’d worked, she’d had no trouble visualizing even the shakiest of suspects committing the crime. Even if a person hadn’t done it, she could at least imagine him or her as the perp. Not Sloan. She couldn’t picture him pulling the trigger. And why not? He was capable of cold, calculating emotional murder because that was what he’d done to her. Yet physical murder? No, she couldn’t see it.
Lifting a hand, she rubbed at the furrows that had settled across her forehead. She could feel her body coming off the adrenaline-charged rush that had overtaken her when she’d left Sloan’s. Now all she wanted to do was curl up in her Arabian Nights bed and think. Let the knowledge seep through her numbed senses that Sloan had loved her when he walked out.
She hesitated only a moment, then squared her shoulders. No, she wouldn’t think about it. Couldn’t. If she thought about what he’d done and why, she’d go crazy.
Just do your job, she commanded, then took a deep breath and slid open another drawer.
She’d made him remember what he’d spent two years trying to forget.
With the fiery July wind blasting against his face, Sloan set his jaw, punched his Porsche 911 convertible into high gear and let the tires eat up the interstate.
Several miles back, he’d given up hope that speed would banish Julia from his mind. Flashes of the taste of her, of the weight of her breast beneath his palm, of the tangled silk of her hair sliding between his fingers, churned in his head.
How many nights had he dreamed of holding her again, kissing her? How many hours had he spent picturing every detail of her face, every curve and dip of her luscious body, when all he could do was lie in bed, as sick as a dog from the chemo?
Too many to count.
Other times, he’d imagined her naked beneath him, shuddering and quivering while he slowly took her, possessed her, restaked his claim.
But none of his imaginings had brought on the ravenous need that had overtaken him barely an hour ago—need that still curled like a fist in his gut. Even now, he could feel her in his arms, her body a mix of toughness and softness, all perfume and silken hair, her skin almost incandescent in the shadowy light of his study.
God, she was beautiful. And for a few brief moments, she’d been his.
He felt again the maddening graze of her lips against his, the scorching current that ran through her kiss. It had been the aching need for that kiss that had had him discard reason for instinct. He’d wanted that kiss for the past two years. Wanted her.
So, he’d taken what he wanted. And made one hell of a big mistake.
“Dammit!”
He steered the Porsche off the next exit, then turned west, narrowing his eyes against the low rays of the afternoon sun. Taking advantage of the absence of traffic on the road that edged Lake Hefner’s shoreline, Sloan stepped on the gas, sending the speedometer needle quivering where it had seldom been.
Why the hell had he let business bring him back to Oklahoma? Granted, it would have been less convenient to oversee the details of forming the wing company from a distance, but it was possible. Why hadn’t he just stayed away?
Because he’d needed to be at the corporate office to make sure things ran smoothly, he answered silently. Because there had been no way in hell to predict Vanessa’s murder. No way to know that deed would bring Julia back into his life, and with her the reminder of all he’d given up.
Julia, who made him want to make promises he couldn’t keep. Julia, who wasn’t just any woman. She was the only woman.
And now, because his maddening want of her had snapped his control like a thin rubber band, she knew the truth. Knew he’d loved her when he walked out, knew the real reason for his leaving. Fine, so she knew. Sloan’s mouth tightened as he pictured the mix of fire and challenge... and hurt that had leaped into her eyes.
Maybe after all this time it was best. Maybe someday she would develop a grudging understanding of why he’d purposely destroyed her love for him.
Maybe she wouldn’t hate him for the rest of her life.
“Doesn’t matter,” he muttered. He’d be in D.C., not here to see if her feelings changed. Sure as hell not here when she walked down the aisle with another man.
Scowling, Sloan fought the urge to just keep heading west and wind up wherever the road took him. He’d worry about the consequences later. Consequences, he thought with a grim set to his mouth, such as dropping the ball with millions of dollars of defense contracts at stake. And what repercussions did a murder suspect face if he left town without advising the police?
He knew if he took off this time, Julia would follow. And it sure as hell wouldn’t be out of love. But she would follow.
An interesting prospect, Sloan mused, and increased the pressure on the gas pedal. Julia following him. Julia fmding him. Just the two of them, off somewhere. Together. Julia lying in his arms while he spent slow, uncountable hours indulging in the familiar taste of her skin. Hours together while he discovered her all over again, fit together every piece that comprised the woman.
Need, as scorching as the wind blasting against his face, fisted inside him.
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. He couldn’t act on that need. Couldn’t ponder a future with Julia when none existed. Her tomorrows lay with another man, and even if he could change that, he wouldn’t. At this point, his illness was in remission, but he had no guarantee how long that would last. In turn, he could offer her no guarantee. No future.
His shoulders stiffened as he stared unseeingly out the windshield. She wasn’t his—hadn’t been for two years. Yet in this fleeting pause in time, he could feel her slipping through his fingers again.
All he wanted to do was grab hold.
“No future, dammit,” he reminded himself fiercely.
With silent regret, Sloan eased the pressure on the gas pedal, steered the Porsche off the lake road and turned back toward town.
An hour after she’d begun, Julia had searched every inch of Vanessa’s bedroom and adjoining closet. She’d checked under, in and behind every piece of furniture; had felt inside seemingly endless rows of purses, shoes and boots. Her fingers had prodded every pocket in the color-coordinated rows of dresses and power suits. All she’d come up with were three paper clips and seventy-five cents in change.
“Find anything?” Halliday asked from the doorway. He’d taken off his suit coat and rolled up his sleeves; the latex gloves gave his hands and wrists a chalky sheen. His starched shirt looked hopelessly wrinkled beneath the straps of his shoulder holster.
“Nothing,” she said, closing the mirrored doors of the walk-in closet behind her. “How about you?”
“Not one computer disk in the frozen entrées. And all that’s in the fridge are low-fat cream cheese, bagels and carrot juice. Which, according to the autopsy report, are the foods consistent with the contents of Vanessa’s stomach.”
Julia sent him a bland look. “I live to hear stuff like that.”
“Another perk of the job,” Halliday observed with a wry smile, then glanced back down the hallway. “No disks taped on top of the ceiling fan’s blades. Nothing in the washing machine—only towels and a bath mat in the dryer. I’ve gone through both bathrooms and the guest bedroom. There’s nothing out of the ordinary in the medicine cabinets. No Baggies full of disks taped inside the tanks of the johns. Not one loose corner anywhere in the carpet, nothing hidden between the mattress and box springs.”
“That’s the only room left,” Julia said, gesturing in the direction of a small sitting room off the bedroom.
The room reflected more of Vanessa’s expensive taste, Julia saw as she stepped through the door. The floor was bleached oak, the area rug a tasteful floral petit point. A slate blue couch spanned one wall. Tucked into a corner was an antique writing desk on which a computer monitor and keyboard sat.
Halliday inclined his head toward the desk. “That’s t
he computer we copied the files off.”
“Then we don’t need to check it,” Julia said as she settled onto the chair behind the desk and began searching drawers. “Nothing,” she said after a few moments.
She rose, moved across the room to a bookcase that held recent bestsellers and neat piles of financial magazines. She slid out a book, checked the empty space behind it, held the book by its spine and leafed the pages, then replaced it on the shelf.
Halliday lifted a cushion off the couch, then poked a hand down to search its depths. “What we know,” he began, “is that if there was a special man in Vanessa’s life, there’s no sign of him in this place.”
“Remember what Rick Fox said at the scene?” As she spoke, Julia continued pulling books from the shelf, peering behind them, fanning pages. “Vanessa didn’t share. Not her space, not anything.”
“I bet she shared that body of hers when it suited her purposes.”
“Probably.” Julia moved to the second shelf and pulled out a book. She continued the process until she’d searched to the end of the row.
Expelling a breath, she propped her hands on her hips and did a slow scan of the room. “Vanessa was smart. Calculating. She had some kind of information that was so sensitive she kept it off her computer’s hard drive and put it on disks with a security access code. What’s on those disks?”
Halliday crouched and peered at the underside of the table next to the couch. “Secret information on the HELD wing,” he suggested. “And on Remington himself. Remember, at the museum she threatened to ruin both his company and him.”
Julia stared at the desk where the computer monitor sat, dark and silent. Again, she tried to imagine Sloan as a victim of Vanessa’s threats. The image simply wouldn’t come.
She curled her hands against her thighs. “Whatever was on those disks, Vanessa had a reason to keep them hidden. But where?”
“Someplace readily available,” Halliday answered as he levered up from the table. “But not where someone else could get their hands on them.” He glanced at his watch, then scowled. “We went through Vanessa’s bank statements and credit-card receipts yesterday. There’s nothing to show she has a safe-deposit box. And after this search, we can rule out a hidden safe in this place.”
“Okay. We know where she didn’t keep the disks. We need to figure out where she kept them.”
“Maybe she came home after her fight with Remington, deleted the access codes and mailed the disks to his competitors.”
Julia shook her head. “I don’t think so. The feeling I get about Vanessa is that she thrived on confrontation. After all, she went into work the morning after she threatened to ruin Sloan. She probably planned to quit, and throw a reminder in his face that she had the information and ability to put his company, if not him, in a world of hurt.”
“Vanessa’s secretary saw the disks in her briefcase. Remington might have seen them there, too,” Halliday said. “He also knew how her mind worked. Maybe he cornered her in the garage and tried to reason with her. When he saw he couldn’t, he shot her, then got the disks from her briefcase.”
“No,” Julia said. “Vanessa locked the briefcase with combination latches—the techs had to pry them open when they got back to the lab. The only fingerprints on the locks were hers.”
Halliday checked his watch for the second time. “So she didn’t have the disks in her briefcase.” Giving his head a disgusted shake, he plopped down on the couch. “Looks like we struck out.”
Julia stared up at the ceiling. “They’re somewhere. Vanessa put those damn disks somewhere.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Holy hell!” Julia turned to face him, her mouth set in an annoyed line. “Halliday, if I’m right, we’ve had them all along.”
“All right, Cruze, I’ll bite.” He leaned forward, forearms propped on his knees. “What are you talking about?”
“Vanessa had a sack of disks on the back seat of her Jag.”
“I read the report. The sack’s from the office supply store where she bought the disks. The receipt was in the bag—”
“I didn’t check the date on it,” Julia said. “What I did do was look inside the box. It’s full of disks...with no labels.” Julia shoved a hand through her hair. “That must be what Eve Nelson meant when she said she saw some unlabeled disks in the briefcase. I assumed they had no file names written on their labels.”
Halliday nodded slowly. “She could have meant disks with no labels.”
“Right. I’ve got Eve’s number in my car. I’ll call her and clarify.” Julia scowled, disgusted that it had taken her this long to figure out. “Just because a disk isn’t labeled doesn’t mean there’s no data on it.”
Halliday pushed off the couch, his mouth set in an appreciative curve. “You’ve got to hand it to Vanessa. She hid the things in plain sight.”
“And made us look like idiots,” Julia said. “Let’s go check the disks out of the property room. If an ‘access denied’ message comes up when we check them, we’ll call Kelly in to see if he can figure out the code.”
Halliday frowned. “Damn,” he said softly.
“What?” Julia asked.
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“I need to call Pam. Tonight’s our last childbirth class. We can maybe reschedule.”
“Your baby’s due next week, Halliday. You think he’s going to wait to make an appearance until you finish your class?” She tilted her head. “Go home. Now.”
“We need to get the ball rolling on those disks.”
“You think I can’t do that?” Julia asked, then gave him a patient smile. “It’s been a big day for you, Halliday. First you get all sensitive on me, and now you’re taking your impending daddy duties seriously. Pretty impressive stuff.”
He grinned. “You tell any of the guys about this, Cruze, and I’ll make you attend the next autopsy.”
“Nothing I can’t handle,” she shot back. “Let’s get out of here.”
“What about you?” he asked as he followed her into the bedroom.
“What about me?”
“You seeing Bill tonight?”
“I...yes. For dinner.”
Julia kept her gaze diverted from Halliday’s as they walked side-by-side down the length of the hallway. She needed to see Bill. Wanted to see him.
Squaring her shoulders, she began peeling off her latex gloves. She was not into self-deception. What happened earlier between her and Sloan was her fault, and she accepted full blame. For one logic-erasing moment, she had succumbed to the heat of him, the taste of him...the touch of a man she’d once loved beyond all reason.
As she walked, the heady sensation of Sloan’s kiss swept over her, kicking up her heartbeat. Closure, Julia decided, swallowing around the tightness in her throat. Best to view what had happened between them as the closure Sloan had denied her. And despite the deep, dark churning inside her that had made her forget both the past and future and just go with the moment, it didn’t change the fact that Sloan belonged to her past.
And that was exactly where she intended he stay.
Chapter 8
Four days after Vanessa West’s murder, Julia stood in the morning sun outside Fairhaven Memorial Chapel, still uncertain who had ended the woman’s life and why. She had a mangled bullet, but not the weapon that fired it. Computer disks, but so far no access code with which to read the information they held. A request pending for a warrant to get the list of guests who’d attended the museum fund-raiser, but due to political rumblings, no list.
From behind the tinted lenses of her sunglasses, Julia checked for Halliday’s cruiser among the cars entering the parking lot beside the resplendent marble chapel. Seconds later, she expelled a frustrated breath at her partner’s lateness. She shifted her gaze to the front of the building where a hearse sat, looking as sleek and glossy black as a panther. Parked behind it was a florist’s van with its back doors gaping. The driver, his arms overflowing with
baskets of bloodred roses, dashed up the granite steps, then disappeared through the chapel’s carved doors.
A group of somberly clad men and women, some whom Julia recognized as Remington staffers she’d interviewed the day of the murder, stood on the sidewalk, talking quietly among themselves. All wore expressions befitting the grimness of the impending ceremony. Only one of them, Julia recalled, had said anything remotely kind about their murdered co-worker. That someone was Don Smithson, Remington’s personnel director. The man who’d turned green after finding Vanessa’s body now looked pale and ashen as he stood amid the group.
Raising a hand, Julia lifted her thick hair off the back of her neck. The sun beat down with blazing intensity; the pavement around her seemed to exhale heat. She considered waiting for Halliday in her cruiser’s air-conditioned confines, but didn’t have the energy to retrace her steps to the parking lot. The dull headache that woke her before dawn had, only moments ago, transformed into a full-fledged hammering. Cursing silently, she dug into her purse, then washed down two aspirin with the dregs of her convenience store coffee. She stared into the empty foam cup, trying to think past the thrumming pain and get a fix on when she’d last eaten a decent meal.
The remains of the candy bar she’d unearthed from the bottom of her purse around lunchtime yesterday didn’t count. Neither did the endless cups of caffeine-laced coffee she’d consumed throughout the past two nights while poring over reports on her and Halliday’s other unsolved case. And, although she’d met Bill for dinner both evenings before hitting the paperwork, the guilt roiling inside her from the kiss she and Sloan had shared made it impossible to do anything more than pick at her food.
A lump formed in her throat. Had she imagined the strained silence that seemed to have settled between her and Bill? Had the wariness she’d sensed in him been nothing but a by-product of her own raw nerves? She didn’t know. All she knew was that every time she’d looked up, she found him watching her steadily. He was a perceptive man—did he see the inner turmoil she so carefully tried to hide? Did he suspect the truth—that her thoughts were maddeningly centered not on him, but Sloan?