“Why,” she asked, trying to focus on it instead of the way his T-shirt fit snugly across his broad chest, “is there a remote control? In case I’m too lazy to take the four steps from my couch to the panel, when I’m ready to go to bed?”
“Oh,” he said, as he handed her the device, “no, you should turn the system on as soon as you get inside. Not the motion sensors, but the rest of it. Remember, there’re two settings. Home and away.”
The thing he’d given her looked like a miniature version of the control panel. “Yes, I remember. Home is when I’m here. Check.”
He smiled, which worked well with the whole nicely fitting T-shirt thing. “The remote’s main purpose is the panic button,” he said, taking it back from her and pointing to the red button on the side. “If you wake up in the night and someone’s between you and the control panel, you just push this, and the alarm’ll go off—silently though. It sends a message—send help—to the monitoring system. Push it twice in a row, and you get the message plus the full sirens, which sometimes helps scare away a potential attacker.”
“But why didn’t the sirens go off when whoever’s standing there first broke in?” she asked, watching him put it back on her bedside table. And why hadn’t he jumped her the moment they got inside? She’d fully expected him to.
“It’s really just a hypothetical,” Dan said.
“In other words, I don’t really need the remote control.”
“It’s definitely designed for people with bigger homes,” he said. “It’s … just a second line of defense.”
“But if our psycho-killer got in by disabling the alarm system,” she pointed out, “it’s unlikely that anything’ll happen when I push the panic button, because the system’s been disabled, right?”
“Maybe he cut a hole through the floorboard and climbed up through Mrs. Harrison’s apartment.”
“Maybe it’s Mrs. Harrison who cut the hole and climbed through it,” she said. “Okay, that seems to be an appropriate reason to panic. You sold me.”
“Good,” he said, laughing. But it faded quickly, leaving behind … heat. Yet, he still remained all the way across the room.
“So,” Jenn said, with a bravado that was as completely manufactured and as false as her request that they come here merely to talk had been. Yes, she definitely wanted to talk to Dan. There was a lot she wanted to ask him. Later. “Day two. What kind of sex do we have on day two?”
She barely saw him move, but he had and he was now kissing her, his tongue in her mouth, his body hard against her, his hands on her butt as he pulled her more tightly to him.
God, yes. She opened herself to him, kissing him back as ferociously, pulling his T-shirt up and over his head as he deftly unfastened her jeans and yanked them, with her panties, down her legs.
This was what she’d expected instead of that tutorial he’d given her on her security system, and she realized that he wasn’t as cocksure as he pretended to be.
And if she truly had wanted merely to talk, he would, indeed, have merely talked—a thought that warmed her the same way his showing her Fred-the-bunny and cleaning her apartment had done.
Which was nice, but not as nice as his exploring fingers between her legs, or the solid smoothness of his bare back beneath her hands, or the way he seemed to inhale her, each kiss longer and deeper and more possessive than the last.
Jenn tried to kick off her shoes, but she was wearing her bad-weather boots, and the laces of the right one were too-tightly tied. She got the left one off though, but remained hobbled by her jeans, even as she pulled Dan free from his briefs.
He was as rock hard as he’d been last night when he’d placed her hand on him, and she wondered if he knew how close she’d been to going into the privacy of the bathroom with him, right then and there—to hell with the fact that everyone would’ve known exactly what they had been doing when they reemerged.
“Ah, God, Jenn,” he broke their kiss to say as she touched him. “I want… I need …”
She knew, because she wanted and needed, too. She tried to kick her jeans free from her shoeless foot, intending to wrap her leg around him and push him deeply inside of her, even as they stood right there, by her front door.
But she wasn’t quite tall enough, and it wasn’t just her jeans that hindered her. Dan pulled back, too.
“Condom,” he said, fumbling in one of his cargo pockets for the little foil package.
Good idea. As he covered himself, she used the opportunity to push her jeans off her left leg, nearly falling over and hopping into the kitchen to catch herself on the counter. “Oh, my God. That would’ve been an embarrassing trip to the emergency room.” She was laughing, and he was, too, as she finally got free and could then focus on untying her boot.
But he came up behind her as she was leaning over, and pushed himself inside of her.
“Oh,” she gasped, as he said “Gahd,” and this time she would have fallen, if he hadn’t been holding her tightly around the waist.
“Oh, my God,” she said again, her voice filled both with her laughter and her surprise.
He’d started to move, but now he froze. “Oh, shit,” he said his breath warm against her ear. “That wasn’t, like, an invitation?”
She laughed again—she couldn’t help it. Invitation? “Yes and no. The whole taking-off-my-pants thing was definitely an invitation, but—”
He started to pull out, but she pushed back against him, not letting him go, and in fact driving him deeply inside of her.
“That,” she gasped, “was an invitation.”
“Uhn,” he said, and she had to grab for the counter, using it to brace herself, as the force of him thrusting into her, again and again and again, pushed her forward.
It felt unbelievably good, his hands holding tightly to her hips, but then it felt even better as he moved to touch her—exactly where she wanted to be touched.
“Jenn,” he rasped. “Jesus, Jenni …”
She knew that she liked it when he called her Jenni, but she’d had no idea that hearing him say it could actually make her come-in combination, of course, with the not-very-gentle sex they were having, and the exquisite placement of his fingers and thumb.
Her orgasm ripped through her, and she stopped thinking, stopped analyzing, stopped doing everything but feeling as she shattered into a million pieces, as she shook and gasped and wanted more and more and more. …
Even after it was over and done.
Her face was practically pressed against her toaster—in fact, she could see herself oddly distorted, reflected in its chrome sides. She could see Dan, too. His eyes were closed and he’d let go of her to hold himself up on the very countertop that she was practically lying on. The muscles in his arms and chest were taut as he worked to catch his breath.
But then he opened his eyes, and looked directly at her and smiled, and had he been someone who was sticking around for longer than two weeks, she would have imagined herself someday telling her children and then our eyes met in the reflection of the toaster, and I knew he was the one. Without telling them what they’d done right before their eyes met, of course.
Instead, she made herself think about all of the great sex they could have in twelve and a half days. And she smiled back at him. “No RSVP jokes, please,” she told him.
Dan laughed and opened his mouth.
“Or apologies,” she cut him off.
“That doesn’t leave me much to say,” he pointed out. “Except … Jesus, I need a nap. After which, can we please do that again?”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Nearly everyone had something they wanted to hide. That was just a fact of life, and it applied to the assemblywoman’s interns and volunteer staff.
Alyssa and Jules settled into a pattern of questioning. She acted as the primary interviewer for the men, and he took on the same job for the women.
Sam sat quietly and observed—and ruminated on the seemingly absurd idea that Maggie Thor
ndyke’s heart had been put in that desk drawer specifically for his wife to find.
It was one of his crazier thoughts, for sure, but he couldn’t shake it, and as Maria’s staff came in, one at a time, he watched them closely as Jules introduced himself and Alyssa with handshakes. At Sam’s request, Jules tossed out a quick “That’s Sam Starrett from Troubleshooters, he’ll be observing today,” so he could stay as much in the background as possible.
He would’ve liked to have been behind a one-way window, but Jules had pushed to do these interviews in the familiarity of Maria’s office, hoping for greater candor.
The big money questions that Alyssa and Jules were asking were: What time did you arrive at the office yesterday morning? Did you see anyone entering or leaving the building when you arrived? How well did you know the victim? Did you see Winston, the homeless man, that morning? And the classic: Can you account for your whereabouts between 9:00 A.M. Friday and 7:30 A.M. Saturday, during the time Maggie Thorndyke was abducted and murdered?
And then there were the little questions, too, about each individual’s background. When did they first meet Maria and Jenn? Did they have any crazed stalkers or, more likely, any relationships recently gone south? What did they think about the other people with whom they worked?
Everyone who’d been in the office the morning of the grisly discovery had made note of the others who’d also been there. Their list was unanimously complete. It had been a Saturday, after all, and they’d come in to assist with a mailing that was finished before 10:00 A.M. At which point, they’d all—except for Jenn and Maria—left before the Troubleshooters team had arrived.
There were four college interns, one volunteer-slash-major donor, the UPS man, Jenn, and of course Maria.
The two female interns—Wendy Ramirez and Belinda Davidson—were interviewed first. They were roommates, living not far from the office. They were also both poli-sci majors at NYU. They’d arrived together on the morning in question, coming in after everyone but Maria was already there.
Neither of them knew Maggie Thorndyke well, although Wendy had run into the woman a time or two on campus because she was an alum. Wendy admitted to giving Maggie her phone number and angling for a dog-sitting job. It was, she told them, with wide-eyed sincerity, probably inappropriate for her to have done so, but the potential pay was too good to pass up. But the one time Maggie had called her—back in December—it had been exam week, and Wendy couldn’t spare the time.
Belinda was as blond and blue-eyed as her name implied—which probably said more about Sam’s youthful love of the Go-Go’s than anything else. She had a secret having to do with Winston. Even though she hadn’t seen the homeless man on Saturday morning, she had, in the past, brought him with her into the office. He would wash in the men’s room, she told them earnestly, while she’d make him coffee and microwave him a meal. He’d even helped her, a time or two, stuffing envelopes for a mailing like the one they’d done yesterday. He was, she insisted, a damaged but gentle soul.
Both women were enthusiastic in their support of Maria. They lit up as they talked about her. They also had gaydar worth shit, because they both relaxed enough to flirt a little with Jules.
Neither gave Alyssa much more than a glance, and both had solid alibis during the hours Maggie was believed killed, and little information beyond that.
Next up was intern Ron Reed, who was a curious contradiction. Despite his laid-back look of long hair pulled back into a ponytail, torn jeans and a Heifer International T-shirt, the law student brought with him a complete written account of his whereabouts over the past week. The details were precise and clearly organized, down to the minutiae of what he ate, when.
He’d merely printed out his log from his phone’s calendar program, he told them this was no problem for him at all, and he could go back further if they needed that information.
He admitted to having a bit of OCD which, he insisted, would work to his advantage when he was employed by a big firm and reporting billable hours.
Ron had brought copies in triplicate, and as Sam glanced through the pages, he saw that on Saturday, the kid’s morning bowel movement had been a little bit loose, perhaps from the sushi he’d had the night before.
Okay.
And yes, Friday night Ron had been in the company of his girlfriend, Amy, and all four of his roommates, one of whom was celebrating her birthday. The party had continued in his living room, well after 2 A.M., when Ron and Amy went to bed.
Like Wendy and Belinda, he was enthusiastic when asked about Maria. He didn’t know his fellow interns very well, though, he tended to keep to himself. Amy could get jealous.
Especially of Maggie Thorndyke. She was a cougar, and all the male interns had learned to stay away from her.
Although maybe not Gene Ivanov, because he was older so she didn’t flirt with him the same way, but back during the campaign, when they had more volunteers coming into the office, Ron and the other guys had put a strict “no one is left alone in the office with Maggie” policy in place.
Not that he had anything against cougars, Ron had added, pointedly giving Alyssa a once-over, as if to say if you’re on the prowl, baby, I’m game. …
It was strangely discordant, like a three-year-old flipping someone the bird. Yet it was still disrespectful on top of being flat-out laughable. But Alyssa didn’t immediately bitch-slap him the way Sam would’ve, if he were her.
He honestly didn’t know how she did it—how she kept her cool in this fucked-up world where nearly every man, including little frightened dweebs like this one, saw her first and foremost as a sex object. And some of them—like Mick Callahan—never managed to see past her beauty to the strong, smart, capable person that she was.
Sam had to count to twenty to keep himself from slapping the punk for her.
But Alyssa just went on down their list of questions until, with a smile, she showed Ron Reed to the door.
At which point she waved Gene Ivanov in, and shook the fourth and final intern’s hand.
Like Ron had said, Gene was older than the others. In his early forties, he was a graduate student at Columbia. Tall and thin, he was quietly handsome. He’d also dressed up for the occasion, as if this were a job interview, or maybe even a date. He wore a suit and tie, and his dark hair was carefully combed.
He was also nervous as hell, his hands clasped tightly in his lap, his voice shaking every now and then as he answered Alyssa’s questions.
Where was he on Friday night? At home, with his parents.
He’d been the first one into the office on Saturday morning, but he hadn’t seen anyone out front, or leaving the building, or in the elevator, or in the hall outside of the office. According to Jenn, who signed off on the interns’ time sheets so that they got proper credit for their work, he’d arrived and opened up the office at 7:30 A.M.
But when Alyssa asked, Gene cleared his throat and told her that he didn’t actually arrive until a little after eight-thirty. He’d worked that extra hour, however. He’d written a rough draft of a speech for the assemblywoman during his commute. He lived out in Brooklyn—he’d moved back in with his parents after his dot-com business failed—and he always left early because sometimes the subway was delayed. But sometimes it wasn’t, so sometimes he’d stop at Starbucks near the office and set up his laptop on one of the tables there. There was this girl, who worked the counter, that he—ahem—liked. …
Sam then cleared his throat, too, and Jules glanced at him, no doubt thinking the same thing: Gene was covering something up.
Did he stop at Starbucks on the morning that Maggie’s heart was discovered in Jenn’s desk, Alyssa asked him and he blanched, but said yes, adding that he was happy to give them a copy of the piece he’d written, if—ahem—they needed to see it.
Some people were naturally nervous, and some got more nervous when facing authority. Others’ nerves were ramped up when they lied, which Gene seemed to be doing.
Would his parents veri
fy that he was home Friday night?
His parents would, he told them. And he gave them his home phone number, but added that they were—ahem—pretty hard to reach. If Alyssa and Jules wanted, Gene could maybe get them to write a note … ?
Like this was high school, and he’d cut gym class.
But the man’s face flushed, as if he were embarrassed to be living at home at his age, and without even waiting for Alyssa to tell him, gently, that a note wasn’t going to cut it, he promised her that he’d make sure his mother would return her call. His father was elderly, but even when he was younger he’d had trouble remembering what he’d had for lunch, let alone when Gene was or wasn’t home.
Sam looked at Jules again. Maybe now was the time to point-blank it and ask the guy if he’d killed Maggie Thorndyke. …
But Alyssa didn’t go there. She just kept asking Gene questions about Savannah. Did he know her well—Maria’s campaign manager?
He hadn’t known her well, but he’d certainly met and talked to her a few times. She seemed nice. It was hard for everyone after her husband was injured and she’d run the campaign via phone, from out of state. But she’d clearly gotten the job done.
Had Savannah ever talked to him about Maria’s safety, or security for any of the campaign’s fundraising events? Had she spoken to him about her friends in Troubleshooters Incorporated, or shown him the TS Inc website?
He gave them a lot of no’s without any throat-clearing.
Still, after Jules showed him to the door, Sam called a time-out.
“This one’s hiding something,” he said.
Alyssa smiled at him. “Gene was nervous,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t make him a killer.”
“We’ll check his alibi,” Jules told him. “I’ll send someone out to his house, see what his parents have to say about his whereabouts Friday night.”
“That’s assuming he hasn’t already buried his parents in the basement,” Sam pointed out.
“If so,” Alyssa said, “why get them involved as his alibi?”
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