by Julie Miller
“That’s what Katie needs, too.” Trent summoned half a grin, appreciating Max’s attempt at deep philosophical advice. “But I won’t lie. It’s hard to be spending that much time with her, given our history.”
“It’s hard because you’re a good guy. You think things through. You wait for an invitation. You don’t just haul off and kiss a woman like I did Rosie when we first met and I was toasted out of my...” Max slapped his palm on top of his desk. “Well, hell’s bells, junior, you did kiss her. And not one of those Dudley Do-Right pecks on the cheek, either, I’ll bet.”
Groaning, Trent tried to temper Max’s stunned excitement. “They were a mistake.”
“They? More than once?” Max swore under his breath. “You’ve been holding out on me. About time it happened between you two.”
Trent glared at his partner. “Nothing happened.”
“No fireworks?” Max looked disappointed. Oh, yeah, there’d been plenty of spontaneous combustion between them on that kitchen stool. But the Die, Katie bombardment on her computer screen had reminded Trent that Katie needed his protection, not his love. Max leaned forward and whispered, “Wrong kind of fireworks?”
Give his love life a rest, already. “It’s Christmas, not Independence Day.”
“Huh?”
“Wrong time for fireworks. I was taking advantage of a vulnerable moment.” Of several vulnerable moments, it would seem.
Max grumbled a curse and sorted through the scattered papers on his desk. “Junior, you don’t know how to take advantage. If Katie wasn’t willing, you wouldn’t—”
“Tyler’s safety is her priority.” Trent pulled a phone book from a desk drawer and started looking up numbers, as relieved to be ending the conversation and getting back to work as he’d been to air some of his concerns with his most trusted friend in the first place. “And it should be. It’s my priority, too. I want to find out who this jackass is and put him in my interrogation room. I want to get him out of their lives so Tyler can just be a kid again and Katie can...”
What? Go back to being his buddy when he wanted to be her bedmate? Her soul mate? Her everything? Now that she and Tyler were staying with him, his worries about their safety had eased a fraction, but remembering not to push for everything he wanted from her grew harder with every passing minute.
“Earth to big guy.” Olivia knocked on the corner of Trent’s desk, pulling him from his thoughts. “The lieutenant wants us in her office. The press is covering Leland Asher’s release.”
Setting aside his troubling thoughts, Trent pushed to his feet, taking a moment to tuck in his corduroy shirt and the thermal Henley he wore underneath before following Liv and Max across the room. Katie ended her call and scooped up her laptop, darting into the office on a waft of flowery scent that reminded Trent of freshly shampooed hair and warm curves pressed against his body. Wisely avoiding broadcasting that woman’s physical effect on him, he took a position standing at the back of the room while Katie set up her laptop and sat at the front of the group. When his gaze locked on to a sly glimpse of cornflower blue directed back at him, Trent wondered if Katie was making a point of keeping her distance, too.
“Let’s see what our friend has to say.” Lieutenant Rafferty-Taylor turned up the sound on the television screen as a twinkling of camera flashes captured the image of Leland Asher walking through the prison exit into the bright, cold sunshine of the wintry afternoon.
Looking like a politician on a campaign stump, Asher waved to the crowd of eager reporters, curiosity seekers and armed guards who were there to make sure nothing got out of hand before the alleged mobster left the premises. Although the once stocky man had lost a lot of weight, probably due to the cancer, there was a sense of entitlement to his carriage. Plus, he wore the impeccably tailored suit and dress coat of a man who still had access to plenty of money. The man with a briefcase beside him led the way to a small podium, where he identified himself as Asher’s attorney and made a statement regarding his client’s release.
But the words coming from the television were just white noise as Katie began to fidget in her chair. She drummed her fingers over her keyboard without typing anything and kept drawing her hair between her fists in a ponytail before letting it fall back to her shoulders when she realized she had no clip to secure it. What was buzzing through that brain of hers now?
An elbow butted up against his, diverting Trent’s attention to his far too observant partner. “You up for this, junior? You want me to take over shadowing Katie?”
“No.” He wasn’t about to leave Tyler and Katie’s security up to anyone else. “I want you to be there to take up the slack in case I can’t get the job done.”
“You not get a job done? Trust me, junior. That’ll never happen.”
Olivia sat on the corner of the table. She nodded to the TV. “He’s on. Turn it up.”
A dark-haired woman wearing a fur coat ran up to the podium to kiss Leland’s cheek. The woman had a striking strand of white framing her face when she turned to the camera. And while she looked adoringly up at the gaunt, graying man, he wound his arm around her waist and held her to his side.
Katie pointed to the screen. “That’s Beverly Eisenbach, Mr. Asher’s significant other. She’s the psychologist who counseled Matt Asher and Stephen March as teenagers.”
“Any response to your query about whether or not Leland was ever a patient of hers?” the lieutenant asked.
Katie shrugged. “Talk to her attorney and get a warrant?”
Trent tuned out Asher’s pontification about learning from his mistakes and how his incarceration hadn’t affected his business investments one iota, as well as the updates on his health. Taking Lieutenant Rafferty-Taylor’s lead, he turned the gathering into an impromptu staff meeting. “I tracked down the house mother from the sorority Bev Eisenbach and Isabel Asher belonged to. She’s retired now, but she remembers the two of them taking classes and hanging out together before Isabel left school. Night and day, she called them. It wasn’t just a blonde-brunette thing, either. The house mother said she never understood how two young women with such different personalities got along so well. Dr. Eisenbach was neat, organized, intent on keeping her scholarships and earning her degree, while Isabel was more of a free spirit who was there for the social opportunities.”
The petite blonde who led the cold case group folded her arms in front of her and nodded, urging Trent to continue. “Does the house mother remember meeting Leland? Can we prove that Leland and Dr. Eisenbach knew each other twenty-five years ago? And does that information do anything to help our case?”
“The house mother remembers Leland coming on campus to attend events with Isabel. They had no parents, so he was more than a big brother to her.”
Olivia chimed in. “We can trace suspected criminal activity to Leland all the way back to that time. He was already starting to amass his fortune, so I’m sure Bev would have been interested in meeting Isabel’s big brother.”
“Maybe that’s what she liked about Isabel,” Max interjected. “She could hook her up to a man who was destined to make a lot of money. Clearly, it paid off for her.”
Trent thrust his fingers into the back pockets of his jeans. “The house mother remembers the guy Isabel Asher was dating, too. ‘A prissy Italian guy’ is how she described him.”
“Francisco Dona.” Katie supplied the name as she typed on her laptop and read the info off the screen. “He was a small-time dealer and user. Looks like they dated each other, or at least used together, on and off for several years until she died. He was questioned as a suspect in Isabel’s death, but no charges were ever filed.”
Trent picked up on a small detail. “You said was. He died in a motorcycle accident. Did anyone ever investigate his death as a possible homicide?”
Katie shook her head. “ME’s report said he died of hea
d trauma. He suspected Dona was under the influence. He found a trace amount of drugs in his system.”
“But Mr. Dona passed about a month after Isabel’s overdose,” the lieutenant confirmed.
“There’s nothing suspicious about the timing of that,” Max groused with sarcasm. “Can anyone say retaliation?”
Trent agreed. “If Leland and Isabel were as close as the house mother claims, then it makes sense that he’d order a hit on Dona. It wouldn’t be the first time an accident was staged to cover up a murder.”
Katie continued to read the information on her computer. “Even if Francisco Dona didn’t provide Isabel with the drugs that killed her, Asher could have still blamed him. According to this, there were no signs of anyone trying to revive Isabel after she collapsed. There wasn’t even a 9-1-1 call until her son, Matt, discovered the body.”
Even though they were talking about alleged criminals, Katie’s voice trailed away in sympathy. She knew firsthand what it was like to deal with the death of a parent, and might even be remembering her own mother’s murder. Trent pushed away from the wall where he was leaning, wanting to go to her. But the sharp blue gaze darting his way was a warning to keep his distance. Either she was telling him she could handle this or she was asking him to keep the complications of the relationship growing between them private.
“Great.” Liv’s sarcasm matched Max’s. “Another murder we’d like to attribute to Asher that we can’t prove. How does this guy keep getting away with it?” She turned to Katie. “Can we at least talk with the ME who wrote the report?”
“That would be Dr. Carson.” Katie turned her focus back to her computer and pulled up the name on the report before shaking her head. “He retired with early-onset Alzheimer’s a couple of years ago. Your brother Niall replaced him.”
Liv groaned at the latest twist. “Does anybody else think that if we could just shuffle all these players in the right order that we’d solve a half dozen murders and put Asher away for good?”
Trent and Max and Katie all raised their hands and Olivia laughed before Lieutenant Rafferty-Taylor directed their attention back to the television. “He’s leaving.”
Hand in hand, Leland Asher and Bev Eisenbach walked to a waiting limousine, where another group was waiting for him. Trent recognized Asher’s longtime chauffeur and bodyguard and spotted a couple more thugs watching the audience like Secret Service men. A young man with glasses—Leland’s nephew, Matt—climbed out of the long black car and extended his arm. The two generations shook hands before Leland pulled his nephew in for a showy hug and whispered something in his ear.
Trent couldn’t be certain, but had Matt Asher arched his brows over the rim of his glasses and made eye contact with Bev Eisenbach before the hug ended? Or was he alerting the group to the fans with more questions and accusations surging their way?
Either way, Leland remained coolly unperturbed by the rush of attention and turned at the people calling his name.
“One last question, Mr. Asher.” A television reporter with long, dark hair thrust her microphone in his face. “How do you feel?”
“Like a free man.” Leland laughed and pulled up his pant leg to show off the parole bracelet on his ankle. “Except for the new jewelry the state has so graciously given me.”
He waved aside the follow-up questions and ushered Bev into the limo before he and Matt and the bodyguard climbed in behind her. The network camera panned the crowd, getting shots of protesters and supporters alike, people who thought, like the cold case squad, that Asher had gotten away with murder, and others—friendly plants, perhaps—who waved signs and shouted about “freeing the innocent.”
When the camera scanned back to the limousine driving away, a far too familiar image near the back of the crowd shot adrenaline into Trent’s bloodstream. In three strides, he was across the office, tapping at the screen. “Are we recording this? Can we get a recording?”
Katie turned her laptop around and typed. “I can get a feed off the station’s website. Wait...”
“What is it, junior?” Max asked.
She pulled up the website as they gathered around her. “I’ve got it. They’re replaying the interview.”
“Freeze it. There.” Trent rested a hand on her shoulder and pointed to the man in the crowd who’d just snapped a photograph of the group at the limousine. Brown hair, long wool coat. Although he couldn’t see the telltale shoes, he recognized the nondescript features and receding hairline. “That’s John Smith. That’s the guy who tried to break in to Katie’s apartment.”
“Is he part of Asher’s entourage?” the lieutenant asked.
“Is he a reporter?” was Liv’s guess.
“Hold on.” Katie went for a more definitive answer. Using her mouse, she framed the suspect in the picture and clicked a screen shot of his image. “Now that we’ve got a face, I can blow it up and run him through recognition protocols. If he’s in the system, I can track him down.”
She pulled back when a private investigator’s license showed up on the screen, along with three different driver’s licenses and a state ID card. John Smith apparently had several aliases he used, and not a one of them looked legit lined up like that. But there was at least one thing in common on two of the cards—an address.
Trent pulled his notepad and jotted it down. “That’s downtown. Probably an office building.”
Katie looked up at Trent. “Go get him.”
CHAPTER TEN
Katie glanced over for the umpteenth time at her flowered bag sitting in the corner of the greenroom backstage, making sure no one had opened it to mess with the contents inside. Good. Still latched. Still safe.
Her research had indicated that her device had been hacked almost two weeks earlier. That day she’d taken Tyler to school, stopped by the coffee shop, gone to work, and hadn’t left until it was time to pick up Tyler at his after-school club and go straight to rehearsal. And since she wouldn’t count her son as a suspect, and no one at work had any reason to track her research since they could access the same info themselves, that left someone at the coffee shop or here at the show to have tampered with her hot-spot device.
Her money was on someone involved with the play—or who could hide out at the theater undetected. So her suspicions of everyone here were riding high. But since she was alone for the moment while Doug and the cast were onstage going over last-minute notes before tomorrow’s final dress rehearsal, she figured it was safe to let the messenger bag out of her sight for the few seconds it would take her to hang up the costumes she was ironing in the women’s dressing room.
She set the iron on its end and gathered up the long dresses she’d prepped for the last run-through before opening night and carried them into the women’s dressing room. She could hear Doug Price’s voice booming through the auditorium and was glad that Trent was in there with Tyler, maybe trading a wink or a thumbs-up to let her son know that Doug’s dramatic speech about “moments” and bringing the audience to tears meant the temperamental director was pleased with the way the show had come together. She was doubly glad that Trent was there to keep an eye on Tyler, to make sure her son had nothing to worry about except remembering his lines and making his entrances.
Because they weren’t safe. Not yet. The threat was still out there.
When Trent and Max had gone to John Smith’s downtown address that afternoon, they’d found a ransacked office, a few drops of blood that indicated there’d been an altercation of some kind and no sign of Smith. A BOLO on the rental car hadn’t turned it up yet, either. That meant Smith, whoever he really was, was still out there, still watching, still looking for a way to get to her. Whether he was a spy for Leland Asher or someone with a more personal interest in her, she felt less and less that keeping Trent at arm’s length was a good idea. The only time she’d felt safe since finding that message scri
bbled in the snow, the only time that Tyler acted like a normal kid, was when Detective Dixon was around.
Katie caught a glimpse of her pale features in the bright lights of the dressing room mirrors and cringed. No wonder Tyler was scared for her. Sleep had been a rare commodity the past few days. She touched the shadows beneath her eyes and wished she had Trent’s arms around her right now, so she could soak up the comfort of his warmth, be reenergized by the thrill of his possessive kiss and feel secure enough to drop her guard for a few moments and simply take a normal breath without looking over her shoulder or second-guessing every move she made and worrying about Tyler.
With the gun and badge on his belt, and the sheer size of those shoulders and chest, Trent didn’t exactly fit the role of backstage parent. But he’d made it clear that until he could arrest John Smith and prove that the part-time private investigator/full-time con man was the person who’d threatened her, Trent was going to be spending a whole lot of time with her. His days, at work and here at the theater—and nights, too, sleeping just a few feet away from the guest rooms in his comfortable ranch-style house where he’d put her and Tyler.
Dear, sweet, solid...sexy, distracting, aggravating Trent. He made her feel all prickly inside when he caught her in the crosshairs of those steely gray eyes. And he hadn’t been kidding when he’d told her a few nights earlier that a woman would know when she’d been kissed by him. After all these years—seeing him date other women, interacting with him herself—how had she missed discovering the difference between friendship and passion, between a chaste brush of his lips at her temple and that powerful stamp of perfection claiming her mouth?
And how was she was going to fit these deepening feelings for the man, this need for his strength and protection, this desire to hold and be held, back into the rules for emotional survival that had kept her safe and sane since her wild, violent and unpredictable youth? It was impossible to think of Trent as a friend while imagining what it would be like to give in to the temptation of his hard body and potent kisses again. Yet it was equally impossible to imagine how she could have gotten through this week in one piece without the friend she trusted implicitly at her side.