by Sarah Grimm
“Why do you copy the negatives this way?”
“It’s a roll’s worth of film on one sheet. With it I can evaluate the quality of the negatives and choose which shots to enlarge.”
“Don’t most photographers use digital?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” She held out her hand, palm up. “Sergeant?”
With her waiting impatiently at his side, Justin peered at the subject of the thirty or so pictures that made up the proof sheet. The woman sat on the floor, straight as a rail, her face away from the camera. All of her hair was pulled to the front of her body, leaving the camera with a clear, unobstructed view of her nude back. His eyes, as he was certain had been the photographer’s intent, traced the woman’s every curve, every vertebrae down to the cleft just above her buttocks and to the small, colorless butterfly tattoo therein.
“What do you mean unfortunately?”
Her slender brows drew together. A few seconds passed before she answered. “Artistically, film is the superior medium. There’s a richness of color and depth that is lost with digital. Too many people rely on photo editing programs instead of an effective use of light and shadow.” She cleared her throat. “Why don’t you stop pretending an interest in my work and just ask me what you really want to know?”
Although she was wrong about his interest in her work, Justin admired her fortitude. He handed her the proof sheet. “What is it I really want to know?”
“You want to know whether I slept with Leroy.”
Her blunt statement took him by surprise. “Did you sleep with him?”
“Not recently.”
“Could you please clarify that?”
“I could. I won’t.”
“I see.” His lips curved. As perverse as it was, he enjoyed her spirit, her unwillingness to give him the easy answer. ”You’re the one who brought it up,” he reminded her.
“Because you were afraid to.”
“I wasn’t afraid, I was…” His gaze slid down the length of her. “Distracted.”
“Right, distracted.” She curled her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down.
A jagged awareness shot into his gut. “Ms. Conroy—”
“There is no way that whether or not I slept with Lee is of any use to your investigation. I did not kill him.”
“I haven’t said that you did.”
“You’ve insinuated it. You may be used to seeing death and dying up close and personal, Sergeant, but I’m not. What I saw this morning sickened me. I still can’t get that image out of my head. I still can’t even think about eating without my stomach turning. I didn’t, I couldn’t do something like that to another human being.” Her eyes slid closed as she drew in a shaky breath. “Especially not Lee.”
Justin couldn’t pinpoint an exact reason, but at that instant he believed her. Not just about her relationship with the victim, but about her innocence as well. He had to admit that he never held much conviction in her being the killer. Not with the amount of strength it would take to hold down a man St. John’s size while he fought for his very life. Unfortunate for her, he still had a job to do and in order to do it, he needed to know as much as he could about the victim.
“Tell me about St. John.”
“I did that this morning.”
“How long did you know him? How did you meet?” He stepped around the low table and walked toward her, firing off questions without allowing her time to answer. “Did it have anything to do with his job as a narcotics detective? Was it before or after his partnership with Preston? Why now, after more than two years, would he feel the need to look into his partner’s murder investigation?”
All the color drained from her face. “Rick?”
Her hand reached out and settled lightly upon his wrist. She might as well have slugged him across the jaw. His muscles tightened, his blood warmed and, unlike the rest of him, his mind suddenly went soft.
“Are you certain?”
“Quite.” Justin dragged air into his tight lungs, bringing with it the soft, subtle scent of her. A bolt of lust caught him right in the chest, then traveled downward. He looked at her hand, at the long, slender fingers curled about his wrist. Such a simple act of connection, a single touch, and with it she’d managed to throw him off kilter. His mind fogged. He fought the urge to cover her hand with his own.
Irritated by his reaction, he shook his head; forced his mind to clear. He damned his traitorous body’s reaction to her and voiced his original question. “What was your relationship with Leroy St. John?”
“Friends, never more. We went out once, when I first met him, but the spark just didn’t exist. We had no connection beyond friendship.”
He felt the loss of her touch as she moved her hand from his wrist. He didn’t like the attraction he felt for her, or his relief at learning she’d never been intimate with St. John. He didn’t have the time for a woman right now. Especially not this woman. “How long ago did you meet him?”
“Six years ago.”
“You would have been twenty at that time.”
She stared at him, her displeasure evident in her posture, in the glint of fire that shot through her eyes. “You’ve done your homework.”
He’d done his job. Checked out her story. Looked into her background.
Paige Louise Conroy, born in Boston, Massachusetts, twenty-six years before to Joseph and Elizabeth Conroy. Raised amidst wealth and privilege, she’d been expected to attend law school and follow her father and mother to one of Boston’s most prestigious law firms. She had the smarts for it; graduated from high school at sixteen, college by nineteen. But instead of moving on to Harvard and marrying in her social class, as her parents had hoped, she’d opened her own photography studio and fallen for a cop.
“A year after we met, Lee got a new partner,” she continued, as if background checks were a routine part of her life.
“Rick Preston.”
“Yes.”
“Is that how you met Preston, through St. John?”
“He and Rick quickly became friends. Lee decided that Rick and I would get along well. He introduced us.”
She didn’t elaborate further. She didn’t have to. Justin already knew what happened next. They’d hit it off, Paige and her cop, hit it off well enough that they’d planned to marry. Only, before the big day ever came, Rick Preston was gunned down outside a local restaurant.
His hand unconsciously shifted to rest on his side. Taking a bullet. A cop’s worst fear, his own worst nightmare. He knew the pain, the physical agony of it, but what about the emotional scars? How would someone, a woman like her in particular, get over witnessing her lover’s shooting?
He never got the chance to ponder further as her voice interrupted his thoughts. “As for Lee reopening Rick’s murder investigation, I didn’t know he had. Not until you just told me.”
She should have followed her parents’ lead. She would have made a damn good lawyer. For that matter, she would have made a damn good cop. Chin high, shoulders squared and looking as if it hadn’t cost her a thing, Paige had just answered every question he’d thrown at her moments ago.
In the order he’d put them to her.
“Do you have any more questions, or are we done?”
Justin frowned. In the space of a heartbeat the tough façade faded, replaced by the same vulnerability he’d glimpsed on his arrival. Before his very eyes she withdrew, closed in on herself. No matter how strong he believed her to be, she’d reached her limit. She wanted him gone.
He could tell himself that he didn’t want to get involved, that he’d only showed up on her doorstep to glean some answers. His reluctance to leave told him something altogether different.
Without considering the why or giving his head time to list all the reasons he shouldn’t, Justin crossed the room to a framed example of her work.
Portraits, he discovered as he moved about, she did portraits. But not your standard, run-of-the-mill headshots. No, her work could not be considere
d traditional. If he were to hazard a guess, he figured her goal was to get the observer to look past the obvious, to forget preconceived notions and see the true person that lay beneath. Yet in each case, the way she went about it differed. The end result—photographs as unique and individual as their subject. Some fun, some adventurous, and others oddly sensual.
Justin compared each new photograph to the one he’d studied first—the woman he’d discovered upon the proof sheet. Although he liked all of her work, saw the skill and beauty in each piece that hung in her studio, the woman with the tattoo remained his favorite. With its stark black-and-white contrasts and unique sensuality, he knew he wouldn’t forget it easily.
Just as he couldn’t forget the photographer easily.
Turning from the photograph before him, he crossed an expanse of oak flooring to the desk tucked against the wall. Another photograph hung centered behind the desk, this one color instead of her preferred black and white. The subject brought a smile to his face. “1959 Cadillac El Dorado.”
She’d taken the photograph in what he could only describe as old-style, not showcasing the entire car, but its unique features. The rear quarter panel and chrome accents of the cotton-candy pink Cadillac sparkled, but it was the red, conical taillights that drew and held his attention. “I like this one.”
When she didn’t respond, he turned. “Ms. Conroy?”
She stood still as stone, watching him in a way that made his body warm. “Paige,” she corrected automatically. With slow precision, she raised her gaze to meet his. “What did you say?”
Justin pushed away from the desk and walked toward her. “The Cadillac. Didn’t I see that car parked in front of your building?”
“You noticed that, did you?”
“I tend to pay particular attention to things of beauty.”
His words darkened her eyes to emerald. Color flashed across her cheeks.
Halting inches from her, he allowed his gaze to slide slowly from her head to her toes and back again. His fingers itched to touch her. Stifling the thought, he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Is it yours?”
“The photograph? Yes, it’s one of my first, before I decided that portraits were more my style.”
“I meant the Caddy.”
“Right, the Caddy,” she replied, a huskiness to her voice that hadn’t been there before. “Yes, the Cadillac is mine.”
He tipped his head. “Does your appreciation extend to all classic cars or just Cadillacs?”
The beginnings of a smile tipped the corners of her incredible mouth. “I love all the classics. What about you, what do you drive?”
“1969 Pontiac GTO.”
“A goat,” she said, using the nickname for the GTO. Her eyes narrowed. “Not a judge?”
“Yes.”
“Stock or custom?”
“Stock. 400-cubic-inch Ram air V-8—”
“With a Quadra-jet carb.”
Justin was impressed. This was a layer to Paige Conroy he hadn’t expected. One of many he’d uncovered tonight. “You know your cars.”
“I told you, I love the classics. Your goat, is it the standard package?”
He shook his head. “Ram Air IV, four-speed manual transmission.”
Without conscious thought, Justin reached out and swept up a lock of hair that lay across her arm. She smelled like roses, he realized, as the gossamer soft strands curled around his fingers. He’d always liked the smell of roses. “I brought her here, if you’d like to see her.”
“I’d like that.”
Justin crossed to the door, held it for her as she stepped out onto the sidewalk. He smiled at the sight of her Cadillac sitting at the curb, its top down in deference to the humid night air, before shifting his gaze to his own car, parked a few feet in front of hers and shining in the light from the street lamp.
Her lips parted as a startled gasp slipped free. Feet still bare, she walked to his car and slowly, one finger at a time, pressed down until her palm lay flat atop the front quarter panel. Even from his distance, he caught her tiny shiver of pleasure. “She’s beautiful.”
Justin watched, transfixed, as she moved around his car, each step forward followed by the gentle slide of her hand across the quarter panel. Down the side, across the rear spoiler and forward once more. Each stroke, each caress of her hand pushed his blood pressure up another notch until he had to steel himself from closing the distance and pulling her into his embrace.
Want consumed him. He wanted her hands on him, not just on his car. He wanted to taste her, feel her, to fist his hands in her hair and sink into her warmth. It’d been too long, far too long since he’d been with a woman—six months, ten days and twenty-two hours to be exact, and he missed it. He missed it more than he missed nicotine, more than he missed being able to draw a deep breath without the slightest twinge of pain.
She looked up and met his gaze across the expanse of the car. A smile curved her lips, brightened her face and lightened her features. Joy, pure, unadulterated joy sparkled in her eyes, warmed her voice. “How long have you had her?”
“About ten years now. I found her in a field behind someone’s house with four flat tires and mold covering the front seat.”
Disgust colored her features but her smile did not fade. Justin caught himself before he could return her smile. He shoved his hands into his front pockets.
It’d been a mistake coming here, a mistake he needed to quickly remedy. For years he’d chosen his women for their physical endowments and little else. He liked them blonde and stacked, girls who didn’t expect more from him than a night of pleasure and tempted him in no other sense than the physical. Only since he’d faced down a bullet and lost, he hadn’t been able to even consider enjoying a woman with the same carelessness as before.
This attraction, this connection he felt with the woman before him, was dangerous. With so much at stake, so much riding on him doing his job and doing it right, he couldn’t afford to slip up. He couldn’t risk another distraction. He had enough of those already, the pain in his side the largest one.
He drew in a deep breath, expanding his lungs, welcoming the accompanying ache as the slap of reality he so desperately needed. He had work to do, a murder to solve. He straightened and pulled his keys from his pocket, then shattered the intimacy by reminding them both of his reason for being there. “If I need anything else from you, I’ll be in touch.”
She blinked once. Twice. All the color drained from her face.
He hadn’t meant to cause her grief, but he watched it wash over her. Guilt settled in, nearly choking him. He tightened his jaw and pushed it away. He couldn’t get involved. He couldn’t allow himself to care.
So he left her, standing beneath the streetlight, arms curled around her stomach. He called himself the worst kind of fool and cursed long and loud. And when he would have looked back, checked to see if she remained there, alone on that empty street, he turned a corner and accelerated, working through the gears with long-practiced ease.
Chapter Three
Paige awoke with a start, the echo of her scream ringing in her ears. She sat up in bed and clutched the sheet to her chest. The smooth gleam of perspiration covered her skin. She shivered once in the moonlit room and pushed hair out of her face with fingers numb with cold.
It’s only a dream, she assured herself, but the knowledge did little to slow her racing heart.