by Joanne Rock
“Sorry.” He straightened, pulling her up to a sitting position on the couch beside him. “I wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t urgent. There’s a homicide scene I need to check out. I don’t know if I told you before, but I spend most of my time at the precinct as a ballistics analyst.”
Her fingers moved over the buttons on her sweater, closing the gaping fabric. She nodded quickly and he half wondered if she was more relieved than disappointed since things had escalated fast tonight.
“You’re going to a murder scene. Now?” She rubbed her hands along her arms and he suspected his job creeped her out.
To his way of thinking there were two kinds of women—cop groupies and the ones who freaked out over the job. There were few and far between who could actually handle the way of life. Why did it bother him that she couldn’t be one of the few? Hell, he hardly knew the woman beyond a few conversations.
And a peel-the-paint-off-the-walls kiss.
“There’s ballistics evidence lodged in brick. The lead detective was hoping I could oversee the extraction to minimize any damage.” The news would be in the papers by morning so he wasn’t giving away state secrets.
“So the victim was shot.” Her eyes flitted over to her newly replaced living room window and Warren realized why the murder scene visit had her spooked.
Guilt pinched him for wishing she was the kind of woman who wouldn’t freak out over his work. Of course she would be uneasy when she’d had a bullet through her window. No doubt his life had hardened him to normal fears.
“This sounds like something more personal than what happened here. The victim was a porn star who met his end in a nightclub.”
Instead of easing her mind, his words made her spine straighten.
“A porn star?”
He didn’t know why it mattered, then remembered her ex-husband was a producer who’d gotten his start in low budget film that gave a few porn stars a legitimate vehicle. Would Tabitha have come in contact with anyone in adult film?
It seemed worth spilling a little more detail to find out if Tabitha knew anything that could be useful to Donata’s case.
“Yeah. John de Milo.” Warren didn’t admit that he knew who the guy was. Warren hadn’t personally checked out much in the way of X-rated films, but the names of the industry’s stars seemed to come up in men’s magazines.
Besides, he’d been reading an unsolved case file on an adult “reality” filmmaker allegedly based in Manhattan and de Milo’s name had been mentioned in the report as an easygoing guy with wide-ranging industry connections.
“John?”
Her familiarity of the dead guy’s given name disconcerted him.
“You know him?” He needed to leave, to get down to the crime scene. But this could be important to the investigation.
And it was damn well important to him.
“Yes. We moved in the same circles at different points in our careers. He always wanted to be a legitimate actor so we ended up at some of the same casting calls back when I was going that route.” She stood, her long skirt sweeping around her legs with the sudden movement. “And I saw him just a few days ago on the set of a late-night, soft-core movie in the preproduction stages.”
She bent to scratch Buster’s head, waking the dog from a snooze. Immediately alert, the animal lifted himself to a sitting position, his tail swishing back and forth across the hardwood floor.
“What were you doing there? This was a film he was making?” He didn’t know if he asked as a cop or as the man who’d just kissed her and wanted more.
Maybe a little of both.
“I assumed John was on site for the same reason I was. To scope out the body double work. Then again, he might have just been friends with one of the actors. He was there with about ten other people, making a lot of noise while the production crew was framing the shots.”
Warren didn’t know what blew his mind more. That she knew a porn star or that she’d been considering taking soft-core work herself.
“You do work like this…often?” He wasn’t about to make judgments. He’d grown up in a house full of people who’d made some seriously messed-up choices, so he wasn’t the kind of guy to cast stones.
But he was curious.
“Never. I was called to the set under false pretenses because my contact sheet makes it very clear that I don’t do that kind of work. Someone’s idea of a joke maybe, but I was very uncomfortable. I wouldn’t have stayed at all except that I didn’t want to offend the director, who shoots a lot of high-paying commercial work.”
That made more sense with what he knew about Tabitha. He remembered the way she’d clutched her robe around her neck when he’d arrived on her shoot earlier. She was obviously confident about her body and took pride in her work, but there was a sweetness about her he couldn’t reconcile with openly sexual films. He didn’t know where things were headed between them, but he was surprised to realize he wanted to know a hell of a lot more about her.
“We need to talk.” Standing, he stalked across her small living room floor to stand eye-to-eye with her. “You want to keep Buster for me while I run downtown and I’ll come by for him later?”
“That would be nice.” She smiled and her eyes lit from within. If he stood there much longer, he’d catch fire, too.
And just like that, he wanted her all over again.
“Keep the dog. I’ll be back in an hour. Two at the most.” He couldn’t keep his hands off her, his fingers grazing her hips with a possessiveness no man should feel toward a woman he’d only just met. But that kiss had him revved and ready for so much more.
He kissed her hard, savoring the taste of her until he had to tear himself away.
Her hair clung to his shoulder as he pulled back and he remembered he had taken it down while they’d been making out earlier. The mass of unruly red waves tumbled around her shoulders, taking her from delicately pretty to outrageously sexy.
“Okay.” She nodded, smiled.
He kissed her again and forced himself to walk out. He hadn’t been this gone on a woman since he’d been hell-bent determined to convince Melinda Cartwright to marry him. A colossal mistake despite his success in that particular quest.
The memory told him to proceed with caution, reminding him it probably wasn’t wise of him to go back to Tabitha’s place in the middle of the night. Especially now that she knew a murder victim.
As a good cop, he should question her further about that and maintain a certain professional distance. When the gunshot at her apartment looked like a stray bullet in a drive-by or the by-product of some street-related crime, Warren had figured there would be no ethical conflict about seeing her on a personal level.
John de Milo’s murder might make that more complicated. But unwise or not, Warren was already counting the ways he could undress Tabitha Everhart.
* * *
SEX WITH WARREN.
Should she plead temporary insanity and renege on the whole deal?
Tabitha quit pacing her living room to weigh the thought. A good thing since all her nervous ambling was making Buster agitated. She’d taken him out for a walk an hour ago, but the dog was still as restless as her in Warren’s absence. But maybe she could relax now that she’d come up with a way to back out of her bargain with Warren when he returned.
She could certainly prove the insanity defense. All she had to do was produce a few tabloid clippings from the year of her divorce and Warren would understand that she was unstable when it came to men. All the papers said so. Her jealous rages were legendary. No matter that there was only one public spat between her and Manny. Manny had a publicist, while she did not, so his spin on things got printed. No man in his right man would want to tangle with a woman like the press had made her out to be.
She could send the most intriguing man she’d ever met on his way without even having to bare a fraction of her real self. How neat and convenient for her.
Except that—in reality—she didn’t want to send War
ren anywhere. Was it so wrong to hook up with a man for dessert only? Other women did it. She just had a hard time picturing how she could manage it since she’d never approached men or sex that way before. Sex had never been her strong suit anyhow, with her tendency to hit her peak too soon. Or at least, it had disconcerted her early boyfriends and pissed off Manny.
That was her first fear. But even if she and Warren got around that without too much embarrassment or frustration, then she had another worry. What if she got attached to him in spite of her best intentions? She ran the risk of getting her heart pummeled in this relationship, that wasn’t a relationship anyhow.
Sinking down into the kitchen chair on the side of the small table she’d deemed her office space, Tabitha hoped if she sat still for two straight minutes maybe the dog would, too. Opening up her e-mail folder, she scratched the dog’s head and waited for her messages to load while she wondered if she’d ever be brave enough to get involved with a man again.
Of course she would. Just not now, when her divorce was barely a year old. She hadn’t simply weathered your average marital split. Hers had been a media explosion complete with passion, jealousy and betrayal. Was it any surprise she felt unsure of herself?
Her next relationship had to add up on paper and not just in her dreamy head. Manny had swept her off her feet with roses and dinners out, his extravagant lifestyle feeding her every stupid Cinderella fantasy. And surprise, surprise, she woke up three years down the road to discover his rampant adultery that no amount of marriage counseling could fix.
She’d breathed a huge sigh of relief when her doctor assured her she hadn’t picked up any diseases from his infidelities. No way would she tread down the hasty fairy-tale path again with Warren just because he possessed enough sexual chemistry to turn her into a grinning idiot. On the other hand, she couldn’t turn celibate just because she’d had a bad experience. Maybe as long as she stuck to the “no relationship” dictate she’d be okay.
Eyes scanning the short list of new messages that had landed in her inbox, Tabitha hoped to see good news from her agent and found only a handful of casting calls for the next day. No callbacks.
How would she pay this month’s rent with no new jobs? She knew she could get enough temp jobs if push came to shove, but her pride resisted that avenue with all her education. She’d attended NYU’s film school. She had classmates in Hollywood and working on Broadway. How could she suck so badly that she couldn’t secure anything but body double work and the occasional foot modeling job? Thank God for her straight toes or she’d never pay the bills.
A mental black cloud threatened overhead but she refused to get sucked in. Her dream of directing had gotten offtrack during her marriage, but with persistence, the film industry would let her back in. Hanging around the scenes as a body double helped keep her ear to the ground until she pulled together the resources she needed to get back to her first professional love.
Working behind the camera.
Turning her attention to the rest of her e-mail, Tabitha clicked open a note from an unfamiliar address with the words first take in the screen name.
The note was short—just a couple of lines.
What’s it like being in that apartment all alone without your new boyfriend to keep you safe?
Yours, Red.
She stopped breathing for one suspended moment. Told herself the note was some stupid new verbiage thrown on a million spam letters in the fashion of “why haven’t you called me?” or a dozen other lines companies tossed into their subject headers these days to attract attention. The timing of this particular note just happened to coincide with her life.
Don’t panic.
Tabitha checked the time the e-mail was sent, hoping it came over yesterday and she’d only just read it now. But the time said 9:20 p.m. Just fifteen minutes ago.
Who the hell was Red? She’d never met anyone that went by that name in her life.
She grabbed her cell phone off the kitchen counter while she clicked on the properties key for first take. No clues there. Just a run-of-the-mill private Hotmail account. No corporate name. Could first take refer to someone in the film industry?
Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
Buster barked, sensing her panic despite her best efforts. Thank God he was here.
Turning on her phone, she called a cab to meet her downstairs and then dialed Warren’s precinct number, which he’d given her the night before. She didn’t know if she’d be able to reach him in the field, but she’d far rather be with him at someone else’s murder scene than stick around here alone and worry that she’d be next.
CHAPTER 5
WHEN ONE OF THE PATROL COPS told Warren he had a visitor, Tabitha was the last person he expected to see on the other side of the crime scene tape. For a second, he wondered if he’d conjured her through sheer want since he’d been thinking about her twice as much as his job while he worked at the homicide site in Lower Manhattan.
But she didn’t look quite like he’d left her at her apartment—with flushed cheeks and a sexy smile—as he led her toward the dance floor outside the tape. Tabitha followed him across the cavernous club, away from the backroom where John de Milo had been killed. She must have seen the address he’d written down when he took Donata’s call. Her eyes were wide and frightened, her skin two shades paler than the starched tablecloths in the club’s VIP section. Buster stood guardian at her thigh, the dog no doubt a ticket to entrance past the cop on street level since Buster was a fixture around the ballistics office.
“What’s the matter? Are you okay?” He knew she couldn’t have seen the body since it had been transported out twenty minutes ago.
He would have left then, too, except that Donata had been filling him in on an unsolved case she’d been working that might relate to de Milo’s death. Apparently she thought his murder was linked to a reality-porn ring she’d started bringing down a few weeks ago. She’d arrested several of the promoters and the guys who’d been planting webcams in private homes for bedroom footage, but she hadn’t nabbed the larger distributor of the films, someone rumored to have big industry contacts.
“Someone’s watching my apartment.” Tabitha pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of her coat pocket and handed it to him.
Donata, the lead investigator at the scene, came over from the VIP room and introduced herself to Tabitha while Warren unfolded the paper. The other cops on site were either in the backroom collecting evidence or questioning people who worked in the building, but Donata apparently wanted to check out Warren’s visitor.
“An e-mail?” He read the paper in silence. “Red?”
“I don’t know anyone by that name and I got it after you left,” Tabitha interjected before Donata could speak. “I thought maybe it was just some dopey piece of spam, but the time frame fits with when you left and I freaked.” She held Buster right next to her legs, her grip on the leash tight and white-knuckled, but to the dog’s credit, Buster looked as though he understood he needed to be there.
“If he was watching the apartment, he could have followed you here.” Warren passed off the paper to Donata and jogged over to the window that overlooked the street. “You took a cab?”
“Yes. I know we figured the bullet through my window was just a drive-by thing, but after I got the note I started to worry—what if it wasn’t?”
Warren wondered the same thing since trouble seemed to be gravitating toward her.
“We can trace the server to see where it originated from,” Donata offered, her soft voice echoing slightly around the empty dance floor of the vacant club. “Chances are he sent it from a public place, but even that much information would let us know how close he was at the time he sent the note.”
Warren had the sinking feeling Tabitha’s ex could be involved in this somehow. But what kind of dumbass signed a threatening note “Red” when his last name was Redding? Warren hadn’t asked her about that, but he would when they were alone—more tactfully, of course.
“I don’t like this.” Warren guessed Tabitha was mixed up in something she didn’t know anything about.
Or worse, she was mixed up in something she hadn’t been completely honest about.
“We can increase the drive-by patrols in your area and alert the beat cops,” Donata reassured her, stepping into professional mode a hell of a lot easier than Warren was able to with his brain on overload.
Of course, Warren knew there was more to connect Tabitha to danger than she did.
“I think you’d better consider a temporary move out of your apartment.” He left the window, not seeing anyone suspicious outside but knowing that in a city like this, it was easy to hide in plain sight.
Especially when you were ducking cops who didn’t have the slightest idea who to look for in a city filled with eight million people.
“I can’t afford any kind of move.” Tabitha was already shaking her head while Donata talked overtop of her.
“Don’t you think that’s a little excessive? She could install an alarm. Buy a dead bolt.”
He walked away from the window, his footsteps echoing on the polished wood floor as he realized his attachment to Tabitha might be coming through loud and clear. His involvement with her could damage the career he’d worked so hard for if he wasn’t careful.
“No.” He withdrew a small plastic bag from his right jacket pocket and held it out for Donata and Tabitha to see. “I found another .38 slug here tonight, the same as the one recovered from Tabitha’s apartment. There’s a small mark on the side that looks like both bullets might have come from the same firing chamber.”
“You think de Milo’s murderer is stalking Tabitha?” Donata put a finer point on it, obviously thinking through the case aloud.
She didn’t seem to think about how that blunt statement might scare Tabitha, but Warren watched as Tabitha’s eyes rolled back. He caught her as she fainted.