Police Business

by Julie Miller

  HER FEET were moving. A.J. opened the front door and ushered her out into the damp night air. The stocky frame of Dwight Powers slid in behind them to block the door and, with a firm click of the latch, no one tried to stop them.

  Chilled drops of rain hit Claire’s cheek and nose, waking her senses as though she’d been in some kind of trance. The light spring shower spotted her jacket and stuck dots of silk against her skin. A.J. nodded off Aaron’s concern and pulled Claire down the steps behind him. They jogged into the moonless shadows beneath the fir trees that lined the driveway.

  “What are you doing?” Claire twisted in his grasp and tried to stop, but her heels sank into the rain-softened dirt. One shoe caught and plucked itself off her foot. She tumbled forward and smacked into A.J.’s back. Ignoring the instant impression of heat and hardness beneath the damp leather, she pushed away. “Where are we going? Where are you taking me?”

  He said something as he glanced over his shoulder.

  “What?” Claire crushed a handful of butter-soft leather in her fist and yanked on his sleeve. In the moment he slowed, she grabbed his jaw between her hands and forced him to look at her. The stubble of beard beneath her palms was as soft and prickly as the pine needles beneath her stockinged foot.

  “It’s too dark out here to read your lips when you’re moving like that,” she protested. Her elbows sank into his chest as she leaned in closer. His hands settled at her waist, scorching her beneath the thin layers of silk that separated them. Blinking the rain from her lashes, she focused on the droplets of moisture that clung to male lips that were so close to her own, close enough to kiss.

  If she’d be so bold.

  If she didn’t think he’d laugh at her naive efforts.

  If she wasn’t so frustrated with every male on the planet, so confused about truth and lies that she wasn’t sure she could even trust what her simmering body thought it wanted.

  “Claire.”

  His lips said her name with elegant artistry. The subtle movement of his jaw teased her sensitive palms. The rain dripped from the trees between them, but she no longer felt it. A.J. pursed his mouth and touched his tongue to the rim to wipe away the gathering drops, and her own lips parted with a hopeful, needy sigh. His fingers shifted their grip at her waist, dipping lower, over the swell of her hips. Anticipation gathered in the tips of her small breasts and made them feel larger, heavier. Cotton and man expanded before her eyes as A.J. took a deep breath of his own. He was pulling her closer, dipping his head. She stretched up on tiptoe. Lights flashed behind her eyes.

  He was pushing her away. He straight-armed her, setting her flat on her feet. “We need to get out of the rain.”

  The mood was broken.

  Frustrations of different sorts, and a dose of major embarrassment made her temper short. She felt the rain now. “Then why drag me outside to get soaked?”

  “You were about to jump out of your skin in there.”

  “So bullying me around out here is the cure for being bullied around in there?” She propped hands on hips still warm from his touch and tilted her chin to hold his probing gaze.

  “Madre dios.” A.J. swiped his hand down his face, taking the moisture and her errant fantasies with it. Then he snagged her hand and pulled her along behind him again. “C’mon.”

  He cut through the trees to a low-slung sports car that was just as black and shiny as his hair. Without the canopy of branches to shelter them, the rain fell harder, plastering her hair against her scalp and wetting the beaded silk atop her breasts. He opened the passenger side door, palmed the crown of her head and helped her climb inside.

  “Where are we go—?” The slamming of the door cut short her demand.

  A.J. disappeared through the row of fir trees. Moments later, she was still peering into the rain-shrouded darkness when something moved in the shadows and he reappeared as if he’d materialized from the night itself. He jogged around the hood of the car, opened the door and dropped into the seat behind the wheel.

  “Here.” Before she could ask a thing, he held out her rescued shoe like a peace offering. “I tried to wipe off the mud.”

  The cover was stained but the shoe was intact. Claire wrapped her hand around it and accepted the gift. “Thanks.”

  “I don’t know how you women walk in those things.”

  “I don’t know how other women do it, but dancers walk on their toes, so I’m used to it. And I can use the extra height.”

  He raked his fingers through his hair, sluicing away the water and leaving it outlined in a haphazard disarray against the darkness outside his window. “You’re a dancer?”

  “Trained for years in ballet and modern dance. Now I teach an occasional class and do it for exercise.”

  “That explains the muscles.”

  He’d noticed muscles on her? Was that good or bad? How did she respond to that? And why did her fingers itch to smooth his hair back into place?

  After several moments spent dripping and trickling in silence, Claire still couldn’t seem to catch a normal breath. Though she suspected her nerves had more to do with the moisture-intensified smells of leather and man filling the car’s interior, she still asked, “Um, do we have to sit in the dark?”

  “Sorry.” A.J. stuck the key in the ignition and started the car. The engine hummed to life with a powerful purr. Claire felt the smooth vibrations like a light, gentle, completely thorough massage. Once he turned on the dome light, she finally began to relax. Before she knew it, she’d sunk back into the seat that was every bit as comfortable as her reading chair.

  She cradled the wet shoe in her lap and trailed her fingers across the supple black leather that covered the armrest. “Nice car.”

  “She’s no limousine, but—”

  “It’s a nice car.” She repeated the compliment more succinctly, wondering if he hadn’t heard her, or if he didn’t believe she could appreciate the obvious workmanship and painstaking care that kept the interior so sleek and spotless.

  “She’s all right. It’s a Trans Am. My dad owned one like it about twenty years ago. I’ve been fixing it up.”

  So the car was well-loved, too. It was a surprisingly sentimental admission for a man of so few words to make.

  But they hadn’t come out here to talk dancing or cars or family history. Claire crossed her arms beneath her breasts, shivering at the cool air from the vents breezing across her wet clothes. “Are we going somewhere?”

  “We’re here.” He reached across the dashboard to turn on the heat. The blast of warmth was a shock to her skin, and a riot of goose bumps popped up in visible protest along her exposed forearms.

  Those golden eyes missed none of her body’s instantaneous reactions to the temperature changes. With a curse of something she couldn’t quite make out—more Spanish, perhaps—A.J. shifted in his seat. Moving with concise efficiency in the car’s compact interior, he peeled off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. He tucked it shut across her chest, then retreated to his side of the car. Turning sideways in his seat, he rested one arm on the wheel and one on the bent knee he propped on the center console between them.

  “Better?” he asked.

  Claire found herself in a strange new world inside the Trans Am. The overhead light reflected off the windows and ignited glints in the wet muss of his hair. Her body temperature rose as the air from the heater filled the car. His jacket, shaped by broad shoulders and years of wear, and still warm from the heat of his body, cocooned her like a soft embrace.

  “I’m better.” She wasn’t just talking about the temperature. “It was getting a little crazy in there, wasn’t it?” Huddling deeper inside the leathery scents of car and jacket and man, Claire realized she wasn’t signing. She hadn’t even been paying close attention to how well she was articulating sounds. “Can you understand me okay?”

  He nodded.

  She stayed huddled in the comfort. “I appreciate the rescue, but there are dozens of rooms in the house. W
e could have stayed dry if you wanted to find a quiet place.”

  “I needed somewhere private to talk. And I like to stick with what I know. Where I’m comfortable. This was the closest piece of personal space I could think of.”

  “Oh.”

  The vague sense of unease triggered by his words intensified as she focused in on the black steel gun strapped inside the holster on his waist. He wore a smaller weapon, with a shiny silver handle, on the opposite side of his belt. The badge and muscles and lack of a smile in between reminded her that this was no friendly stroll through the rain, no secret rendezvous to explore the sensual awareness still sparking along each nerve ending.

  “You want to talk about Dwight Powers treating Valerie’s disappearance as a murder investigation.” She closed her eyes, but the memory of the bullet hole in her friend’s face was already chilling her from the inside out. “You think I’m a handicapped, sheltered rich girl who doesn’t know anything about the real world and how cruel it can be. You want to know if I can handle the questions, the spotlight.”

  She tried to look out her window, but in the reflection, she realized she couldn’t escape the probing omniscience of A.J.’s golden eyes. “You want to know if I’ll stick to my story. If I can live with the pressure from my family to make this whole situation just go away.”

  He brushed his fingers beneath her chin and turned her to face him again. “Say the word, and we don’t do this. I’ll talk to Powers and we’ll keep you out of it.”

  Wasn’t the investigation as much his as the assistant district attorney’s? Claire couldn’t hear the inflection of his words, but she squinted to catch the meaning in his expression and interpret it. There was something more here. “But?”

  He released her chin and boldly reached inside the jacket to find her hands and pull them in between his. “Galvan may already be after you.”

  His blunt answer stunned her for a moment. But as he leaned toward her across his knee and gentled his stern expression, Claire realized on a sobering breath that she already half believed him. How else could she explain the feeling of being watched? “You think he knows that I’m the one who saw him?”

  “Maybe he found that pin, or his accomplice did. It wouldn’t take long to connect the school name to you. You reported the crime, you’ve been to the precinct office, you’ve talked about it with your family. He might not know what you saw, but he’ll figure out soon enough that you were there. That’s not neat and tidy, the way he likes things.”

  An invisible weight bore down on Claire’s shoulders. “So instead of innuendoes about there being a witness, you want to throw my name in his face?”

  With a single finger, A.J. reached up and smoothed a sticky tendril of damp hair off her cheek. He tucked it behind her ear, brushing against the speech processor there, exposing the receiver inside her ear. Claire caught and held a self-conscious breath. He glanced at the device in curiosity, but didn’t avert his eyes in polite embarrassment or pull away.

  “I don’t like putting innocent people in the line of fire. Powers thinks that if we’re as bold about this as Galvan is, it will force his hand. He’ll have to move more quickly than he likes. Hopefully, Galvan will make a mistake. We’ll see him coming, and we’ll be ready.”

  The safety of anonymity. The guilt of doing nothing. Twenty-three years devoted to family duty and easing her father’s concern. The untapped desire to make a difference in the world.

  Claire’s breath slowly eased out. “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s right. Galvan won’t leave town as long as there are loose ends.” A.J. withdrew his touch and sat back, as though he didn’t want to influence her decision. But those eyes, and the potential danger of what he was suggesting stayed with her. “The plan is to let Marcus Tucker use his fabled security team to keep an eye on you while KCPD raises a ruckus and waits for Galvan to show his hand.”

  “I have a question.”

  “Ask. Anything.”

  “What if you don’t see him coming?”

  Chapter Five

  The man stood in the darkness and peered through the rivulets of water streaking down the windowpane.

  “Yes, I see them.” He spoke into the cell phone in one hand, and in the other, he flipped the cheap gold Forsythe pin between his long fingers.

  That detective was smart. He hadn’t turned on the interior light of the black Trans Am until the two had done enough talking and breathing and who knew what else to fog up the windows and blur the view of anyone who might be watching. He listened to his partner’s concerns, knew he had a right to be worried. But he wasn’t. Yet.

  He’d love to hear what was going on inside that car. A lecture? A plea? A seduction? The man in the darkness almost laughed aloud at that one. Claire Winthrop didn’t have it in her. Her father’s bank account was the sexiest thing about her, and cold, hard cash, tempting as it was, couldn’t warm a man’s bed at night. Her proper, virginal ways couldn’t, either.

  But his partner had no sense of humor.

  “She’s daddy’s little girl. I don’t think she has the backbone to go through with it. And the D.A. has no case without her.”

  The man on the phone disagreed in two languages.

  “I don’t care what you like—you’re not in charge of this operation. I pay you, not the other way around.” Though his partner did have a point. They’d been at this for too long to risk discovery. “Let me do what I can to discredit her first.”

  He moved closer to the window, but kept himself hidden in the shadows of the unlit room. The windshield in the black Trans Am was clearing. Rodriguez had done some gallant thing with his jacket, and Claire was no doubt eating it up. Was it just Kansas City’s finest taking care of one cold, wet citizen? Or was there something personal going on between them? He’d have thought a woman like Gina Gunn would be more the detective’s type.

  The man at the window smiled in remembered satisfaction. Now there was a woman with real fire running through her veins.

  “The deal with the police officer? I don’t know. He does seem familiar. The name, too. I already have my men putting together a dossier on him. We’ll figure out his game.”

  No, he wasn’t worried.

  “I’ve used Winthrop Enterprises with scarcely a hitch for a number of years now.” Gathering his patience on a controlled sigh, he continued. He didn’t like to explain himself. “Valerie tried to change the arrangement on us. Whether she thought she was doing it for love or money makes no difference. She wasn’t in one hundred percent, so she needed to be out.” He squeezed the pin in his fist, bending it with his strength. “I won’t let some stupid girl stop me from getting what I want, either.”

  His partner made a suggestion, and his face creased with a wicked smile. “You are a clever son of a bitch, aren’t you? Yes, I can arrange that. But nothing else for now. Give me another twenty-four hours to handle this without drawing any more attention to the project. We’ll still be on schedule to eliminate the others, and no one will be the wiser.”

  And after twenty-four hours? “If nothing changes, we’ll add them both to your list.”

  A.J. ZIPPED INTO the dark blue coveralls that masked his gun and purpose, and adjusted the prescription-free glasses on the bridge of his nose. Picking up the tool box he’d borrowed from the custodian’s closet, he went out to the granite steps that led up to the Forsythe School’s main entrance and began replacing one of the iron hinges that anchored the retractable security gate.

  The students were arriving now, drawing up to the front walk in yellow school vans, being dropped off by parents who foisted umbrellas and jackets on them for later in the day. To A.J.’s surprise, the students were just as noisy and talkative as any other group of young teenagers. Though their hands flew as quickly as their tongues, they were happy to reunite with friends they hadn’t seen for several hours, eager to complain about homework assignments, anxious to share about boys and gossip and their favorite team.

&nbs
p; He stooped over his work, keeping his back to the two plainclothes security men sitting in their parked car next to Claire’s beige Volvo. He had to give Marcus Tucker his props for assigning a dedicated security team to watch over her, but the two suits could have done a better job of blending in. They were drawing plenty of attention from protective parents and curious students alike, who clearly knew every vehicle in the parking lot and were bound to notice an unfamiliar face on the premises.

  Besides the undercover detail, he’d spotted a uniformed guard stationed outside Claire’s office, and a second one patrolling the hallways. A.J. had done his homework; he knew Tucker’s men had foiled kidnappings in foreign countries. They kept the paparazzi and disgruntled employees away from the Winthrops and their associates. He knew that no serious harm had come to any member of the family. They were well-qualified to guard the heiress.

  But A.J. felt a personal stake in keeping Claire safe while his partner Josh and several other detectives from the Fourth Precinct went to work locating Valerie Justice’s body and flushing out Dominic Galvan. Claire’s name was bound to surface in the investigation. And because Galvan was out there somewhere, looking for the witness who had seen his face, A.J. was here.

  He wanted Galvan and the secrets at Winthrop Enterprises to be revealed. But to do that with a clear conscience, he needed Claire to come out of this in one piece.

  He’d promised her last night in the car. The same car that still smelled of lavender and class from the woman who’d been inside it with him. Just like his jacket this morning retained her scent. Just like his memory refused to shake the unprofessional images that stayed with him from last night.

  Standing outside in the shadows and rain with Claire, A.J. hadn’t been thinking like a cop. He hadn’t been thinking of her as a witness who could break a case wide open for him, hadn’t been thinking of her as an heiress who was out of his league. He hadn’t been thinking of her as a kid who was more than a decade younger than him, and twice as innocent about the world.