Tough Justice: Countdown Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  As if he could read her mind, his hand wove into her hair and he pulled her head back. No hesitation. His mouth landed on hers as if he’d been dreaming about her, too.

  He picked her up with one arm and turned to take her to the bedroom. She saw him place his gun on his entrance table. So he’d been feeling skittish, too. Nick dropped her on his bed, still warm from the heat of his sleeping body, and just gazed at her.

  With a slight smile he deliberately removed her holster, and hesitated for a second over her boots.

  “You want me to leave them on?” she asked wriggling into the warmth of the bed.

  He rolled his eyes and slipped them off. “Maybe your socks?” he said.

  She huffed out a laugh as she remembered that she’d grabbed holey socks when she’d got dressed as she’d done no laundry all week. The laugh slipped into a moan as he drew her socks off her feet, stroking her soles as he did so.

  She opened her mouth to tell him that she needed him.

  “Don’t,” he said with a slight frown.

  She gave him a nod. She knew what he meant. Just this. Intimacy with no words. Instead, she held her hand out to him. A simple gesture, but one that held more meaning, even if neither would admit it.

  Slowly he reached for her hand. She held it, warm in hers for a second as she met his gaze, and then pulled him to her.

  As his hands confidently explored the contours he knew so well, she slipped into a state of near-oblivion. Just her body and his. The tension crackling between them. The heat that spread through her, making her skin fritz and her thoughts melt away.

  She needed him. He was exactly what she needed. Moments later they were naked, her straddling his hips, feeling everything as she rocked against him. Teasing, or maybe promising. He stilled her and took control, flipping her effortlessly on to her back.

  He possessed her so fully and deliberately, she wondered why they hadn’t been together, doing this, for the past year. That was her last rational thought as she arched to meet him again.

  * * *

  Lara left Nick’s bed, calm, sated and most importantly, no longer scared of her dream, or the mysterious fire escape dweller, which if she’d been in her right mind, she would have realized was probably a cat.

  Nick slept still, his arm over his eyes. She watched him for a minute after she’d dressed. Why weren’t they together?

  She slipped silently out of the bedroom and found herself in his living room. She’d been there plenty of times before, but had never been able to really look at the things he deemed important enough to display.

  There were photos of his mom with her arms around two boys, obviously Nick and his brother. Nick had that spark in his eyes even back then. Lara bit her lip and touched her finger to his smile.

  The curtains that hid the bay windows were some kind of beautiful tapestry in muted colors. He’d pulled them before he’d gone to bed. She touched them. A girlfriend—maybe Sally—must have put these up. These weren’t the choice a single man would have made, as perfect a match as they were to the color of the sofas and the worn, comfortable arm chairs. It was a home.

  In contrast, her apartment still looked the way it had when she moved in. The only pictures or photos in the apartment were on her murder board. She prodded her heart for a second. Nope, none of that bothered her. She wasn’t secretly hankering for a home like this. A man like Nick. He was all about family, and creating a warm space in which to live. None of that even occurred to her. She pulled a face at herself in the mirrored tile that faced the window that made the room seem twice its size.

  She was going to run out on Nick, escape his home while he was sleeping. But that felt like cheating. It’s what he would expect her to do. It was the easiest way to manage this...aberration. She felt the slight soreness of her body, which was no longer from her bad dream, and smiled. Awesome aberration. She decided to stay, shower and make coffee for them both. He had about twenty minutes before he had to get up and head back in to work. They both did.

  At the thought of work, she tensed a little. Ben was still on a deadline, and they had just over six hours left to figure out where he was. The image of his terror, being surrounded by those flashing lights insinuated itself into her brain. Suddenly coffee and a shower seemed an impossible to justify luxury.

  As she grabbed the bag she’d dropped in Nick’s hallway, his bedroom door slid open.

  “You off? You don’t want to leave money on the bedside table first?” He yawned and scratched at his stubble.

  “I wasn’t going to. I was going to shower and make you coffee, but there’s no time,” she said. She dropped her bag. “Besides, I don’t have enough money to pay you adequately for last night. We’ll just have to say that I owe you one.”

  He smiled. “Noted,” he said simply, then turned and made for the bathroom. “See you later.”

  “Bring coffee,” she said as she closed the front door behind her. She could picture his exasperated expression, and grinned to herself.

  As soon as she jumped into a cab outside his building, her phone rang. “Agent Grant.”

  “It’s Carla. You need to get down here.” Her voice sounded shaky.

  “What is it?” Lara looked at the car’s clock. It was nearly 2:00 a.m. What in the world was the sketch artist still doing working?

  “I got to the 24-hour convenience store you told me to come to, only to find the door locked. The hours on the window clearly say it’s open 24/7. But... Lara, I can see his legs sticking out. There’s blood. All over the floor.”

  Adrenaline spiked through Lara. “Stay there, I’m on my way.” And like that, her post-sex good-humored mood evaporated. She should have taken Dan in when she saw him rolling a joint. If she had, it would have kept him safe. He’d still be alive.

  She took a breath before calling Nick to fill him in. She then called NYPD patrol and homicide to the scene, and told the cabbie to break all the speed limits. She pressed a button to redial Carla’s number, but it went straight to voicemail. Lara wanted to tell her to wait at the gas station for her. She didn’t want to leave another civilian at the scene where the Whisperer could find her.

  She kept hitting the redial button until she arrived at the scene. Relief flooded through her when she saw Carla sitting on the curb, her briefcase next to her. Lara shoved some money at the cabbie, and jumped out of the car.

  “I tried to call you again and it went to voicemail. What happened?”

  She held her cell up and shook it at her. “I’ve had a long day. It gave up the ghost after I called you.” She sounded better, less shaken to Lara’s ears.

  “Why on earth are you still working?” Lara asked, gazing at the closed door of the store.

  “You said he ran a 24/7 store. I thought it safe to leave him until last. As I said—long day.”

  Lara could hear sirens in the distance. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to stay and chat to the first responders. It shouldn’t take too long since you didn’t go in.”

  “Sure, sure. Just look and tell me I wasn’t imagining it.” Carla stood and brushed off her pants.

  Lara suddenly wondered if she’d been sitting on the curb because she felt faint. “Are you okay?”

  “Yup, sure,” she said, carefully not looking at the store.

  “Okay. Stay there,” Lara said. As she turned toward the store, she heard Carla choke a semi-laugh as if to say that there was no way she was going anywhere closer to the storefront.

  Lara steeled herself to look in. She could see legs, and a pool of blood. She took a steadying inhale. She couldn’t tell for sure that it was Dan, but logic suggested it was. Dammit. She should have just arrested him for possession. Then Carla could have seen him at the police department, and he wouldn’t be dead right now. The thread of uncertainty pinged against her confidence again.<
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  “You’re right. There definitely is someone lying on the floor.” With no immediate danger, she could wait for the NYPD to bust open the door. But she was taking over from then on.

  The sirens shut off as they pulled into the street. They cruised to a quiet halt in front of the store. She got out her credentials and asked for the ranking officer. The first out of the patrol car pointed at the guy getting out of the passenger side. “That’s Sergeant Dakins,” the younger man said.

  “Sergeant. Special Agent Grant, FBI.” She showed her badge.

  He paused for a second. “Why are the feds interested in this?” he asked.

  “There’s a good chance this is related to a case we’re working. This is Carla Gatenzi, our sketch artist. She was here to get a description of the perp we’re chasing. Looks like she didn’t get here in time.”

  “Fair enough.” He gestured toward the two men in the following patrol car and pointed them toward the door.

  They went to their trunk and pulled out a large battering ram. The sergeant continued as they discussed the best place to break the glass. “Have you called your forensics?”

  “Yes, while I was en route,” Lara said. “Can you stay to secure the scene?” She was trying not to tell him who she was chasing. She didn’t need emotion clouding the situation. NYPD’s temperature was high since the bombing of their precinct.

  “Anything you need,” he said.

  Lara hesitated for a second. She’d never been made to feel welcome by the NYPD at a crime scene before.

  He nodded back to the team. “We worked out of the Williamsburg station before some son of a bitch bombed it. Now we’re working out of Greenpoint. The chief told me who was working the case.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Lara said simply.

  The sergeant nodded and turned back to his car. “Just tell me there’s more than just you working on the case,” he mumbled.

  Before Lara could open her mouth to explain how hard they were working, a convoy of black Suburbans came down the street with blue lights flashing behind their grills. They stopped in front of the store. Agents wearing FBI vests jumped out, four took barriers out of trunks and cordoned off the road. Nick waved at her. She beckoned him over.

  Nick nodded and said something to James, Jennifer, Ty and Xander, who all fell into step behind him.

  “Special Agent Delano, this is Sergeant Dakins from the Williamsburg precinct,” Lara said.

  Nick immediately picked up the cue. “Sergeant. We’re sorry for your loss. Really.” He shook the sergeant’s hand. “These are agents Harrington, Gulden, Walsh and Jackson. We’re working 24/7 on this, you have my word.”

  Dakins seemed about to choke up at the sudden memory of his colleagues, and the fraternal love the FBI was showing him and his men. Sensing this, Nick slapped him on his back. “Okay, what have we got here?”

  Instantly there was a smash and a tinkling of falling glass.

  Dakins waved his arm at the open store. “I guess we have a crime scene.”

  Lara was first in. She wanted to be sure it was Dan. She rounded the corner of the counter and staggered at the sight.

  He was in exactly the same position as she had found her mother in more than two decades earlier. She looked again. Exactly the same. Legs apart, one arm over his head, face tipped to one side, and blood pooling from a bashed in skull. Nausea roiled her stomach, a flashback to her dream, or maybe it was the reality of her mother’s death. She couldn’t tell, she was so disorientated.

  James shouted at her. “Lara. Come here.” It was loud enough to snap her out of her daze. She stood up straight and not looking at Dan again, she found James in a corner of the store.

  “What have you found?” she asked, her voice cracking.

  “My colleague about to pass out at a crime scene. What’s wrong? Are you okay? I didn’t want the police to see our lead agent go to pieces at the sight of a body.” He took her arm. “Jesus, you’re sweating. What happened back there?”

  She knew he couldn’t just brush his concern off. He’d seen her with too many dead bodies to think that she’d suddenly become squeamish. “Can we talk about it later?”

  He eyed her with concern, but gave her a short nod.

  From the counter, Nick’s voice carried. “So what do we know?”

  Lara stepped out of the aisles. She knew Nick knew this, but to bring focus to the rest of the team she summarized the situation. “Dan Smith worked in this store. Its owner has a state-of-the-art video surveillance system...from the 1990s. The camera outside probably picked up the Whisperer doing something. Loading Ben into his car, maybe. Parking and waiting for Ben to come home. Either way, he realized there was a camera here, and approached Dan dressed as an undercover cop, and asked for the video footage from the time that he abducted Ben. Dan handed it over.

  “I sent Carla to sit with him, to see how much he remembered about our perp. Carla showed up about half an hour ago to find this scene. I would say that the Whisperer was worried that Dan would be able to identify him.”

  “So where is the 1990s surveillance system?” Xander asked.

  Lara took him into the back office. She stuck her fingers into the hole where the video should have been. “I guess the Whisperer took it.” She went to the safe and after two attempts, opened it.

  “That’s not worrying at all...” Xander said with raised eyebrows.

  “I watched him open it before,” Lara explained while running her fingers down the dated spines of the tape.

  “And you remembered a safe combination, like, just because?” he said, clearly in awe.

  “It was only a few hours ago—” Wait a minute, that was right. It was only a few hours ago. She did some mental math. If the Whisperer had taken the tape that showed the abduction of Ben, and Dan had put a new tape in immediately, then it’s possible that the cameras would have caught the Whisperer retrieving the abduction tape. Dammit. Why hadn’t she thought of that this morning? Maybe Dan would be alive now.

  “Look, he took two tapes—one that showed him kidnapping Ben and the other showing him killing Dan, but he didn’t realize he was also on film leaving the store with the abduction video. See, that tape is still here.”

  “Give it here,” Xander said.

  Lara threw it across the room and Xander snatched it out of the air one-handed, barely looking at it. She would have commented on his mad skills if she hadn’t been suddenly so filled with hope that they might actually see the Whisperer on the tape.

  He fumbled it into the video machine, muttering about antiques. The image on the screen was split into four different feeds. Each one came from a different camera in the shop. The very first scene showed a man in a baseball cap taking the tape from Dan and leaving the store. His brim was too low to get a visual on his face, but with her heartbeat racing, they watched as he got into an SUV with blacked-out rear windows. He pulled a U-turn and drove northbound away from the store.

  “Yes!” Lara pumped the air. “Get that to Christina as fast as you can, see if she can trace it via the traffic cams.” She wanted to slump with relief. They had something. The Whisperer might be freakily good online, but in real life—or with antique equipment—he sucked.

  She hoped.

  She wondered what physical evidence he had left with Dan. It was time to focus. When she left the back room with Xander, he headed back to the office, and she stayed with the others.

  Nick had seen the photos of her mother’s murder, not to mention the fact that he’d seen the scene that Moretti had left for her in the kitchen of her old apartment the previous year. He could see it was—similar at least. “Are you all right?”

  “Sure,” she replied, forcing herself to look at Dan’s body. Not least because she still felt that she was in some way responsible for his death.


  “I would have made the same call, Lara,” Nick said, watching a lab tech bag Dan’s hands.

  “What call?” she asked automatically.

  “I saw him rolling a joint when we were outside his store, just like you did. I didn’t arrest him, either. It’s just as much on me as you. Don’t take this personally. Don’t make this—” he waved at the scene “—about you. It’s not.”

  Lara stared at him. She remembered just an hour before, losing her mind with the feeling of him moving inside her. Meeting him stroke for stroke, kiss for kiss. And here they were. It felt wrong and right at the same time. Dammit. There was too damn much going on in her mind at the same time. Too damn much. “I appreciate you saying that,” she said, pushing her gaze onto something less searing.

  She imagined seeing the Whisperer entering the store. Did he wait for another customer to leave? Did he look at the magazines for a moment, pick a newspaper? Or did he walk straight to the counter with his baseball bat? How would he have hidden it? A baseball bat is fairly hard to conceal. Was it a baseball bat? Was she just projecting what she knew about her mother’s murder? How was it that two psychos had messed with her head about her mother’s murder?

  “They’re scared of you,” James said.

  Lara spun around, alarmed that she hadn’t even noticed that Nick had gone into the back room and James was standing beside her.

  “What?” she blurted.

  “You’re wondering why criminals always come back to your mother’s murder. It’s because it’s pretty much the only way to throw you off your game. You’re the best investigator. Your mother’s murder isn’t exactly confidential. It doesn’t take much digging to find details. Don’t let it, okay?”

  “Don’t let it what?” She was thrown that her young colleague knew so much about her that he could virtually read her mind.

  “Throw you off your game.”