by Lia Lee
“I’m going to make a phone call,” Anne said, picking up her coffee and her phone. “When I get back, we hit it.”
“Sounds good to me.” Jeffers kicked his heels up onto the top of his desk.
Another potential bonus: Jeffers was one of the few detectives who didn’t mind having Anne as a primary on a case. Was it respect for her skill or just apathy? Not that she cared, as long as she got to run the investigation the way she knew was best.
Anne moved at a good clip as she exited the bullpen and made her way outside.
“‘Sup?” Michelle answered, with all the seriousness her barely-legal self could muster.
“Are you home?” Anne asked.
“No. I’m at school. It’s study group night.”
“Which one?” Anne knew it didn’t really matter, but her protective interest seemed to prevent her from getting to the point.
“Stats. Ugh. This class is so ass, Anne. I don’t know why it exists.”
“But it was that or calculus, and you know I don’t think you should take on too much your freshman year.” Anne had no call to tell her baby sister what to do in college, since she’d only completed her own degree through night school anyway. “Hang in there, Miche. Look, when will you be done? I’m gonna need someone to pick up Evie.”
“Aann-niie!” Michelle stretched the word out like an abused rubber band. “Jake and I were going to go out after study group!”
Anne winced at the near-whine. A remnant from Michelle’s onerous teenage years. “I’m not ordering you to. You’re theoretically an adult now, and you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to except pay taxes. But your big sis would really appreciate it.”
Michelle gave a little huff. “You’re working late, huh?”
“Murder case.”
“Fine.”
Anne could imagine her sister stomping her foot a little as she huffed.
“I’ll do it. But you’ll owe me.” Michelle paused. “Next pizza night, I get to choose toppings.”
“Ugh. Gross.” Anne smiled a little. Michelle was notorious for her bizarre taste buds. Still, Anne knew she was getting off light. She had been asking a lot of Michelle lately. “Okay, we’ll have whatever weird thing your gut wants next Friday. But I’ll have to make buttered noodles for Evie.”
“Sure. And I’ll bake some cookies. She’ll like that.”
Anne smiled. If nothing else, she could count on how much Michelle liked being the “cool” aunt. She and her sister talked for another minute before getting off to return to her desk. Jeffers had disappeared, so she texted him to get his butt back there and sat down to get her notes in order.
Her chest heavy, she considered what it would be like to see William again. Three years was a long time. Though, everything probably seemed longer in prison.
Anne rested her chin on her palm and reached over for a framed picture on her desk. Evie was getting big. She was a handful and oddly clever for a toddler. Anne rested her eyes on her baby girl’s golden curls and slate gray eyes. Of course, Evie was clever. Anne would be lucky if the girl didn’t end up a criminal mastermind.
Chapter Two
Anne seemed smaller than William remembered. He had looked up from the desk on the second floor of the shop, from where he could see the bulk of the first floor and its inhabitants, and there she had been. In all her five foot five glory and righteous self-importance. She was a detective now, out of the uniform, which was a pity, since he’d always thought she had worn those snug, brown pants rather well.
Her fashion now was no less figure-fitting. Strolling around with her chin held high and her lips pursed in perpetual judgment, Anne was an intimidating presence no matter what she wore. William couldn’t say, though, that the crimson leather jacket over the blue-gray blouse and sharp black pants weren’t doing it for him. He’d always been a sucker for that tough persona she put up for her own survival.
He’d love to see that slick outfit crumpled on the floor of his bedroom.
“Well, if it isn’t the Vegas PD’s very finest,” William boomed from above. The expressions on their faces as they both craned their heads to see him were priceless. “Come to find a rare book? I’ve just found a one of a kind misprint. Some medieval typesetter snuck profanity throughout the Biblical parables and added some spice to the ‘begetting’ in the Old Testament.”
Anne ignored this and set a hand on her hip. “We’ve come to question you regarding the murder of Jarvis Pigg.”
“Well, I think your first suspect ought to be his mum, for giving him a name like that.” William leaned on the railing and smiled at her innocently.
Jeffers chuckled. Anne frowned and cast a look around the book explosion that was the first floor. The entrance to the staircase had been obscured by said books. William pretended not to have noticed and continued to look down on her.
The last time he’d seen her, they’d been sitting across from a visitor’s table. Her long hair had been recently cut short to spite him, and she had been looking wearier than he’d ever seen her, through tough cases or marathon lovemaking. Even then, he’d longed to touch her, to reach across the table and claim her mouth in a passionate kiss. The guard had barked even when he’d moved to touch her hand, and Anne had looked glad for it. She could have simply disappeared, refused his calls, and let him intuit that she was out of his life. Anne wasn’t the type though. She would always be the one to come, face-to-face, to break your heart and tell you that you wouldn’t be seeing her again.
It made sense. She had her career. It wasn’t as though having a boyfriend in prison was a desired trait in a potential detective. And she had the little sis to think of. She was also too damned stubborn to accept William’s offers to ease her burden. She could’ve given up the life entirely and lived in leisure. He could’ve put Michelle through school without the hint of a dent to his finances. Granted, he’d laced irony into his words every time he had suggested she leave the force. She wouldn’t seriously consider it, but it would’ve made William’s life easier if the woman he loved weren’t always investigating his friends and business partners.
And now, he was seeing her again. Stubborn and beautiful as ever.
“We have evidence that puts you at the scene,” Anne said dourly.
William raised his brow. That was interesting. Since he’d never heard of this fool before. “Alright. I’ll bite. When am I meant to have been out ‘murdering’? And who is Jarvis Pigg, other than a very unfortunate fellow in life and death?”
Anne put her hands on her hips. William smirked. He could see down her blouse from here and had no intention of tipping her off to the layout of his overflowing shop. If he wasn’t mistaken, her breasts, which had been a mere handful the last time he’d had the pleasure of laying his hands on them, were plumper and rounder than before.
“You can answer our questions, or you can head on down to the precinct,” her partner said in a voice meant to be threatening.
“It would help if you asked one,” William shot down to the man. He was more the image William would conjure of a cop. Shabby. Pudgy. Self-important.
“Come down,” Anne ordered.
William rolled his eyes and headed for the stairs. “As you wish, my dear.”
He watched her as he descended. Her hair, longer now but still not as long as when they’d been together, was pinned primly behind her head, and chestnut curls fell loosely on the sides. He hadn’t been wrong. Her body, still petite and strong, had gained a softness. Her curves had blossomed; she looked ripe and juicy and ready to be plucked.
“Stop it,” Anne snapped.
William ran a hand over the front of his form-fitting dark blue shirt. Her eyes followed his hand and widened. He wondered if she’d noticed the changes in him. Three years in prison? Not exactly a vacation.
“What are your questions?”
Anne held up a picture of a sledgehammer of a man. “Our vic. Recognize him?”
William took it and looked clos
ely. It was a mugshot. Apparently, Pigg hadn’t been the type to stay on the right side of the law either.
“No. Don’t reckon I’ve ever seen ‘im before. Though, he’s not very distinctive, is he? Looks like any of a dozen slabs of muscle a dealer might employ,” William offered.
“And you know a big-time dealer working around here?” Jeffers pressed.
William pursed his lips. “I’ve tried to keep my fluffy hindquarters clean since my release. Too easy to get caught up in someone else’s mess, you understand.”
Anne clicked her tongue in annoyance. From her expression, she didn’t believe for a second that he’d actually been innocent. That was fair. He hadn’t been. But he was out regardless, and he wasn’t looking to find himself behind bars or on the other side of a Glock.
“Sorry. Don’t know ‘im. Don’t know who he might’ve pissed off.”
“Alright.” Anne held up another picture. “Recognize this?”
William’s brows shot up. Now that was… Before he could catch himself, he looked down at his left hand and blinked in confusion. Shit. He shouldn’t have done that.
“Where were you last Sunday night?” Anne barked.
“Out of town,” William muttered.
“Anyone who can vouch for that?” her partner asked smugly.
“The plane ticket. I was picking up some merchandise in Southern California.” William unglued his eyes from the ring to level a serious glare at the man. “Didn’t get back until late Monday night. You can check with the airport. You can show my picture around all y’like.”
“Then how did this end up at the crime scene by the body?” Anne pressed.
“Dunno.” William relaxed his shoulders and expression with practiced ease. “Maybe he dropped by the shop when I wasn’t around and stole it. Maybe it slipped off my finger walking around town, and he thought it was pretty. Maybe there’s more than one ring out there with a garnet stone. I couldn’t tell you.”
“What will you tell us when the labs come back saying you’ve worn that ring?” she countered.
“I’d go back to the ‘lost it’ defense. It’s circumstantial, and you know it. I wasn’t in town.”
“You’re awfully calm for someone who might be charged with murder,” her partner said.
“Well, you’ll find that when a man isn’t afraid of someone finding something on him, he tends not to care too much,” William said.
“No. I find that when people are falsely accused of something, they get angry,” Anne replied.
“And when people are falsely accused, convicted, and serve part of the time that belongs to someone else, they have more faith that the system will sort it out eventually, even if the cops can’t seem to manage,” William drawled.
Oh, there it was. That beautiful little wrinkle in her forehead, the scrunch in her nose, the glint in her eye. He’d right pissed her off. And the way he was grinning now was probably only pissing her off more.
“Y’know what I think?” William folded his arms over himself loosely. “I think you have no idea what happened here. I think you don’t have a bit of real evidence, and you’re just here hoping to find a clue amongst all this dust.”
He shook his head and started to stroll around them. Both turned to follow him, and her partner’s hand moved instinctively to his side, probably where he kept his gun. William made note of that. This guy was ill-trained, insecure, and possibly a coward. Anne knew she could take an unarmed perp down without using her weapon.
“You’re connected to this. And there’s something you aren’t telling us,” Anne said. Her tone was almost gentle now. Was it a ruse? An attempt to play on their old feelings for each other.
If so, the joke was on her. His feelings were anything but in the past, but he still wasn’t going to let her manipulate him.
“If you really think that, darling, you ought to come back with a warrant.” William raised one brow and pressed his lips together as he scanned over her one more time. “I think you know that I have an excellent lawyer.”
Anne reached into her jacket, and William didn’t flinch. She pulled out a card.
“Call us if you hear anything on the street,” she said. “That’s a suggestion in your best interest. You don’t want to be caught obstructing an investigation.”
William turned the card over between two fingers. “Tisk-tisk. Hurts a man’s feelings. Is that all you want me for these days? To pump me for information?”
“What else would I want to pump you for?” Anne said dryly, before turning and leading her partner out of the store.
William clenched his jaw and bent the card from the pressure of his grip.
***
William prowled about his penthouse suite like a tiger, muscles rolling powerfully as he moved back and forth, temper simmering just below the surface. He’d barely been out a month, and the authorities were already sniffing around his door. And with Anne leading the charge…
Anne hadn’t been the one to take him down. On the contrary, by the time the Feds had gotten together enough evidence to charge him, he’d charmed her so thoroughly into his bed that they’d spent more time in his place without clothes than with. Their bodies had left a trail of sweat across the Vegas Strip, marking a path of their affair as it had grown from forbidden passion to a deeper, more intractable affinity.
When they’d led him away in cuffs, William had been planning on proposing to her.
But now, they were back to the dynamic that had first defined them. Anne was the cop. William was the criminal. She trusted him about as far as she could throw him. (Though, with proper leverage, she probably could give him a nice flip.) Twisting his fingers and stretching his neck from side to side, William looked out over the city through the floor to ceiling window that his suite offered. Pretty lights twinkled over a city of sin and shady dealings. It was the ideal place for him, really.
He wouldn’t be looking down on the city from a hotel if it weren’t such a hassle to regain his holdings after prison. Despite being cleared of all wrongdoing, the gears of bureaucracy moved slowly. He couldn’t help but find it ironic that this financial paperwork was such a holdup, considering they’d originally been able to look into his businesses from a tax document that some agent had forged. If they’d taken their time, they might have been able to put him away for most of his life.
Even then, all of his charges had been related to fraud, smuggling, and tax evasion. No one had ever been able to pin assault on him, let alone murder. In a fit of rage, he swept an arm around, sending a lamp to the floor in an explosion of glass. He glared at the pieces and rubbed his finger over the spot where he had always worn his ring.
“How could you think of me like this, Anne,” he muttered.
Then, with a chuckle, “Oh, someone is going to pay. No one steals from a Spencer, no one frames a Spencer, without finding out the full weight of what that name means.”
Chapter Three
Across the desk, in Anne’s tiny home office, sprawled a dozen files, reports, and pictures. Above her, she’d placed a map, with pushpins stuck into the location of the murder, where the vic had lived, and all the places associated with the few leads they had. The last few days had been fruitless and frustrating. William’s alibi had checked out, and she didn’t know how she felt about that.
There had to be a reason why his ring had been at the crime scene. Either that reason was William had set up a pretty airtight alibi, having someone who looked enough like him pretend to go out of town, or… What? It couldn’t be a coincidence. So the alternative was that someone was targeting William in order to cover their crime. Unfortunately, neither option seemed particularly infeasible. William was crafty, and Anne had no doubt that he’d accrued a lot of enemies over his lifetime.
Twirling her pen in her left hand as she stared obstinately at the map, Anne couldn’t help her thoughts drifting back to William, and not in a professional way. He had looked different. Sharper. Almost gaunt. The high cheekbones that
had always made him so striking now resembled axe blades on either side of his face. Though, she felt a shiver remembering how his biceps still strained the sleeves of his shirt. Prison had clearly been difficult for him. She wasn’t sure why it hadn’t occurred to her before that this would be the case. Maybe because his silver tongue had gotten him out of practically every tight spot that he could find himself in. She’d never had to worry about him before.
She closed her eyes for a moment, almost feeling what it had been like to have that tongue in her tight spots. How it had searched and writhed, and he’d brought her to a quivering mess of delight every time he’d had the chance. He was so good at it.
But she couldn’t let him get to her like this again. He had been the best thing in her life, but he had also been her undoing. If she let her guard down now, things would get beyond messy.
With an almost preternatural sense, Anne knew that she was no longer alone. If only that sense were available to her on the job. She turned to see a head of golden curls peeking out of the doorframe, where Evie was trying to hide. Anne rose slowly, and then after two silent steps, swept her daughter up into her arms.
Evie exploded with giggles as Anne peppered kisses all over her forehead.
“Where did you come from? Weren’t you playing with Aunt Michelle?”
“She’s coloring.”
That meant Michelle was probably doing homework for her design class. Anne shifted Evie onto her hip and took her out of the office, making sure to close the door behind her. The girl couldn’t read yet, but there were certain images that Anne would prefer Evie not see until she was thirty, if possible.
“Oh, hey,” Michelle muttered without looking up as they entered the living room. Michelle was on the floor, cross-legged, as she used an X-Acto knife on some odd kind of paper. Anne couldn’t pretend she understood it. She only knew that the end result would be a graphic design degree and a well-paying job.
“Thanks for looking out for Evie this week. It’s been… intense,” Anne admitted. She shifted Evie on her hip, and the little girl rested her head on Anne’s shoulder. So sweet. Must’ve inherited that from her grandmother, since she clearly didn’t get it from either her mother or father.