Cassidy and the Princess

by Patricia Potter

  “Quiet desperation,” she’d called it once.

  Cassidy MacKay had none of that. He knew who and what he was.

  He had that air of competence this morning. His usually unruly hair was combed, and he’d shaved; she caught a whiff of some masculine scent. Jeans hugged a body that was not the athletically sculptured form she’d grown accustomed to on the competition circuit, though he was obviously in good shape. His forearms were tanned, strong, but without the developed muscles that Paul had. His fingers were unusually long, even elegant, which didn’t go with anything else.

  Her gaze met his. She’d noticed before that his eyes were dark, enigmatic. Guarded. They’d rarely shown any emotion. They didn’t now.

  “We have a car in back,” he said. “I think we can avoid the reporters.”

  She was relieved. She really had not wanted to cope with the media this morning. He opened the door for her, waited until she was out, then shut it gently behind him. Two uniformed policemen were seated in chairs outside her door, although that, she’d learned, had taken some negotiation with the hotel management. The manager had not relented until Cassidy had told the manager to simply explain to enquiring guests that they had an important celebrity they could not name.

  They didn’t take the elevators but walked down four flights of stairs, the uniformed police at their heels. They went down to a parking garage, and as they stepped out of the elevator, they were met by Manny in his car.

  She looked at both men, knowing she was putting her life in their hands, that she was stepping out of a world that had been safe, if not exactly secure. For a moment, she wanted to flee upstairs.

  MacKay opened the back door of the car and held out his hand to help her in. The sudden warmth of it sent an electric shock through her. Her eyes met his, and this time they weren’t empty at all. He felt it, too. She could see it in the muscle that throbbed against his cheek.

  This was another kind of danger. She knew it. She was also drawn to it.

  Be careful, she warned herself, when his hand jerked away as if it had been burned. Be very, very careful.

  Touching her was unwise. Very, very unwise. Cassidy had felt the sudden hesitancy in her, had seen her hand tremble for a moment.

  But he didn’t want to lose her now.

  He’d been able to get resources he’d only dreamed about before. The press on the killer was scaring the city. It had been bad enough when the victims were prostitutes, but now that an internationally known figure had been attacked, the public would be demanding results.

  But he’d been warned that he had limited time, no more than a week. Any longer would be far too expensive in terms of both money and manpower. Which meant he had to bait the trap quickly.

  His first concern, though, had been Marise’s safety. He would have additional detectives in the house at all times—ones he had chosen himself.

  He also had asked to be told if any member of the department asked to be on the special squad. He still hadn’t dismissed the idea that the killer might be a cop. So he wasn’t taking any chances.

  Once Cassidy had Marise inside Manny’s car, he threw his keys to one of the uniforms. “My car is the blue one over there,” he said, gesturing to where he’d parked in an emergency spot. “Do you have a squad car?”

  The senior of the two officers nodded.

  “Have someone pick it up. You two can take my car and follow us.”

  The older one nodded. The younger one couldn’t take his eyes off Marise Merrick. For some reason, that annoyed Cassidy considerably. He put Marise’s bag in the front seat next to Manny, then got in the back seat with Marise.

  He felt unusually large and awkward. Every movement Marise made was graceful. He felt like an elephant next to a gazelle. But then she smiled at him, and he didn’t feel awkward at all.

  He felt something else altogether. And as he did, a knot of apprehension twisted his stomach. He didn’t need this. Any personal feelings interfered with what he needed to do: protect her and catch a killer.

  He steeled himself against her appeal. She already treated him like a friend. She was that way with Manny, too. And that touch had been like a hot electrical wire, snaking across his body, sparking reactions he didn’t want to feel.

  Cassidy knew he was glowering. Manny told him he did it better than anyone. But when he looked at Marise, he saw that she was unimpressed. Instead, she regarded him with bemusement.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For putting your life in danger?”

  “For letting me do something about it.”

  Something shifted inside him. She’d said the words with such simplicity. Even gratitude. He felt like a fraud. He was using her. Nothing more than that. And he wondered why she seemed to cater so much to her mother, and even to Paul, when there was so much strength and substance to her.

  “Has your mother always been your manager?” he asked to dissipate the expectancy that was radiating between them.

  She tensed slightly, then seemed to forcibly relax. “Yes,” she said. “She was a skater herself. She knows the business. She’s wonderful with the costumes.” Then she turned and looked out the window. “Are we really going to your house?”

  “Don’t expect much,” he warned her. “I bought it at a bargain price because it needed so much work.”

  “Are there really a lot of policemen in the neighborhood?”

  “Manny lives half a block away. A captain in another division lives three houses down. Two other members of the Atlanta P.D. live within two blocks. A lieutenant in the sheriff’s department and a highway patrol major also live nearby. That’s how I found my house. It had been an eyesore, and Manny knew I like to work with my hands.”

  She gazed up at him with those magnificent eyes. “You’re doing the work?”

  “Some of it,” he said.

  “All of it,” Manny interrupted. “My wife calls him when she needs something done. It’s humiliating.”

  They traveled the rest of the way in silence. He didn’t see any other cars keeping pace with them, but then, they were not trying to hide. In fact, he was going to make sure her whereabouts were leaked.

  They wanted the assailant to come after her. If all went according to plan, she wouldn’t be there then. A policewoman would be.

  But there was something he’d learned long ago. Whatever could go wrong, would.

  “What do we do next?” she asked.

  “After you get settled, we’ll go back to the hospital and start going over personnel photos. He doesn’t know how little you really did see. We’re going to make him wonder a little more.”

  “If he’s with the hospital.”

  “My guess is he’s connected in some way.”

  “What if he doesn’t find out I’m…helping to find him?”

  “Then, I’ll leak a story to the media that we have a witness who can identify the killer and is going through personnel files. I’d rather he found out another way. It wouldn’t be as obvious.”

  “If he’s as smart as you think he is, why would he walk into a trap?’

  “Because doing nothing would be more dangerous. And serial killers usually think they are smarter than anyone else. He’ll know I’m protecting you. He won’t know about the others.”

  She nodded, apparently satisfied.

  As they drove into his driveway his stomach tightened. He’d tried to tidy up, but it was a man’s place. Still, it was probably the safest place for Marise. What neighbors were not law enforcement officers were sympathetic to them. All were friends. Manny planned to visit each house and ask that they keep an eye out for strangers.

  It would be strange to have a woman in the house again. He’d dated since his marriage, but he’d never brought any of them home. Not since Laine left.

  He’d not gotten around yet to painting the trim, and the house looked a little like an aging dowager without makeup. The exterior was a bungalow in an older neighborhood, a community where prices were spirali
ng because of their in-town location. After he and Laine had bought it, he’d spent the next two years fixing it up.

  While he had thought the house would help the marriage, it hadn’t. He’d spent every waking moment away from the police department working on it. He hadn’t noticed her growing distance.

  Marise was looking at the house with interest.

  He sure as hell wasn’t going to apologize for it. Yet he knew she was used to much better. She probably had a large home somewhere.

  Manny drove into the garage, which was one of the first things Cassidy had added. It was only a one-car garage—there wasn’t room for more—but he’d built it with a direct entrance into the house. Now he was grateful that he had; it made the place safer.

  The exterior was brick with a screened front porch. There once had been a back porch but he’d closed that in and made a sunroom. For Laine. Now he seldom used it. He was seldom here, in fact.

  He opened the car door and started to go around to the other side, but Marise let herself out. She didn’t act like a princess, but then, princesses didn’t agree to be bait. She didn’t say anything, but followed him toward the entrance to the house as the garage door closed behind the three of them. He opened the door leading to the kitchen.

  It had undergone a frantic face-lift. Dishes in the sink had gone into the dishwasher, a five-day-old pizza had gone from the refrigerator into the garbage. There was nothing to brighten the room, however, but the yellow daisy curtains Laine had selected.

  He led the way into the living room, which was furnished with what his male friends called “early bachelor.” Dark overstuffed sofa and chair, a large-screen television and bookcases. He’d put clothes away, but books and magazines, and even several newspapers, lay haphazardly on tables.

  He saw Marise’s gaze go to the sunroom just beyond the living area. It had cheap patio furniture. But her eyes lit.

  “What a wonderful room,” she said.

  “Cass built it,” Manny said. “Cass can build anything. He’s building a sailboat up at his sister’s place.”

  Cassidy noted that Manny did not call him Hoppy. Perversely, he was annoyed. Manny was obviously trying to play match-maker.

  As if he and the princess had anything in common.

  He was very aware of that as she stood awkwardly in the house of which he was so proud, the house he had remodeled, first with love and then with resignation. He was no longer building for the future. He was finished with that part of his life.

  “You have my room,” he said. “We have detectives in the second. I’ll sleep in my office.”

  “I’ll take the office,” she said.

  “You haven’t seen it,” he said. “No one but me could find a way through it.”

  She cocked her head. “That bad?”

  “That bad,” he confirmed.

  “All right, I’ll take the bedroom,” she agreed.

  He took her suitcase into a bedroom and laid it down on a chair he’d brought in from the dining room. “There’s a bathroom right outside the room. It’s yours. We’ll use the one off the living room.”

  “I feel like I’m dispossessing you,” she said with a hint of a smile.

  “Believe me, as a stakeout, this is pure luxury,” he said.

  “This is a stakeout?”

  Her blue eyes were intense. He realized his error immediately. To him and the others, it might be a stakeout. To her, it was her life. But he wasn’t good at niceties. Never had been. He changed the subject. “Have you had any breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “What about some frozen waffles.”

  She smiled. A genuine wide smile that made him want to do the same.

  “It sounds wickedly wonderful,” she said.

  “I doubt they’re wonderful,” he said. “Filling, yes.” But the anticipation didn’t leave her eyes, and he wondered about that. She was slim. How much had she sacrificed to stay that way?

  Manny was taking care of the police officers. They would stay outside until the detectives arrived. Then the police officers would take the detectives’ vehicles back to the department. Cassidy didn’t want any extra cars in front of the house.

  “I’ll unpack,” Marise said, and glided out of the room, leaving it very empty.

  Manny returned and found Cassidy in the kitchen. “You got to be kidding,” he said as he eyed the package of frozen waffles.

  “You have any better ideas?”

  “Yeah. A lot of them. I’ll send Janie over to cook you all a good meal.”

  “Maybe Janie will have something to say about that.”

  “Nope. She’s dying to meet the princess.”

  “She’s not a princess,” Cassidy growled.

  “I think she is,” Manny said with offended dignity. “And she likes you.”

  “She needs me. And you. There’s nothing more,” Cassidy said.

  “You never fixed waffles for me.”

  “They are frozen,” Cassidy said patiently.

  “Those, either,” Manny said with a grin.

  By the time the first popped up, Marise had returned to the kitchen. “I like your house,” she said.

  “It’s not finished,” Cassidy said.

  “I still like it. I always wanted to live in a home that looked like a real home.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “A condominium in California when we’re not traveling,” Marise said wistfully as she took a waffle on a plate. He’d already put a big dollop of butter on it, as well as real maple syrup.

  He put another on a plate for Manny and popped one in the toaster for himself, then he leaned against the sink and watched her eat.

  “A glass of milk?” he asked.

  “Thank you.”

  The milk was spoiled.

  “Coffee?” he suggested.

  “That would be good.”

  He looked for the instant coffee jar. It was empty. Manny was shaking his head.

  “Water would be fine,” she said.

  He poured her a glass of water and sat down to discover that his own waffle was now cold.

  This isn’t going to work.

  But it had to.

  It was going to be hell, though. Being in the same room with her disconcerted him. And it had been a long time since he’d felt so…inadequate.

  Just a few days. Then he could reclaim his life. His instant coffee. His hot frozen waffles. A shirt thrown on the sofa.

  A few days.

  A very long few days.

  And, he thought as he watched her enjoying those slightly over-toasted waffles, too few.

  That last thought was more terrifying than any killer.

  Chapter 5

  Marise usually had a can of vegetable juice or some protein-laden drink for breakfast. A waffle, even this waffle, was a treat. Because weight was so crucial in pairs skating, she watched every bite of food. She rarely ate for pleasure.

  But now she was hungry and she didn’t care. A cup of coffee would have been nice, but she was more than compensated for the lack by the look of chagrin on her host’s face.

  She was intrigued with the house itself, particularly the sunroom that was all glass with unusual angles. If MacKay had designed it, he definitely had a bent for architecture. The rest of the house looked unfinished. There were few pieces of furniture in both the living area and her bedroom. What there was in the living room was worn, but looked comfortable.

  Still, there was a warmth about it, a symmetry of color and space. Perhaps because of the books that crowded out everything else. For some reason, she hadn’t expected that of a police detective—and that, she realized, was snobbish. But the books included a potpourri of titles: histories, biographies, novels, shipbuilding, architecture. There was an appetite for knowledge revealed in their variety.

  There was no similar variety in his kitchen or cupboards. The kitchen looked virtually bare, and when he’d opened the refrigerator, she’d noticed that it, too, looked bare except for a s
ix-pack of beer. The freezer, though, was full. Mostly with frozen waffles, frozen dinners, frozen hotdogs.

  Like a sponge, she soaked in evidence of who the man was. She had, after all, put her life in his hands.

  The waffle was like manna. She finished and looked at him. His was gone, too, although his partner’s remained nearly untouched.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “We go to the hospital and look at photos.”

  “I wouldn’t recognize anyone.”

  “He doesn’t know that.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Can I wear this?” She looked down at the track suit she was still wearing.

  A smile touched his eyes for the first time. “Yep. You look fine.”

  “I look terrible,” she disagreed, knowing that her hair needed washing and her eyes must have shadows. She hadn’t slept well last night. “When do you want to go?”

  “Now?” he asked.

  Better to get it over with. The sooner the man was caught, the sooner she could get on with her own life. The sooner she would be safe.

  If she could ever really feel safe again.

  Something important—something valuable—had left her life.

  Cassidy must have seen it in her eyes. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You will probably need to see someone,” he said gently. “You’ve gone through two traumatic events within thirty hours.”

  He’d known exactly how she was feeling. She wondered whether it was impersonal, whether he treated every victim like that, or felt the same odd connection with her that she felt with him.

  The warmth of his hand flooded through her like a warm syrup, slow but very satisfying.

  Then he moved it, gathered up the dishes and took them to the sink.

  She stood. She would need a touch of lipstick, if nothing else.

  The doorbell rang, and she stood aside as MacKay went to answer it. Two men stood in the doorway.

  MacKay introduced them. Sergeant Sam Preston and Detective Dan Kelley. The latter was almost as tall as MacKay. The other was shorter, wiry thin. Both were polite but couldn’t quite conceal their curiosity.

  MacKay walked them around the house, showed them the second bedroom and explained that they would stay inside. He didn’t want anyone to see them.