by Kristi Lea
He could haul her back to California and turn her in to his own office. He would have already bundled her into his car if he were still on active duty. But since he couldn’t keep an eye on her personally, that idea tasted like bile in the back of his throat. Cutlass had it in for her, and possibly for him too.
There was no paragraph in the Policies and Procedures handbook to deal with this situation. Just his gut. And his gut told him to take her suggestion and take her out of town. And fast.
“Where would we go?”
The question must have caught her off guard because she blinked twice and then closed her mouth. She opened it again to speak, but the ringing of his cell phone interrupted. He glanced at the Caller ID. Cole’s personal number.
Noah clicked the talk button and moved to lean his back against the door to the hallway. She hadn’t run yet, but he didn’t trust her not to try while he was distracted. “Grayson here.”
“Hey, Noah. I tried to stop by your place just now but you weren’t home.”
Noah forced a smile into his voice. “Back already? How did it go?”
“Eh. I’ll tell you about it later. Want to meet up for a beer, or are you cleared for drinking yet?”
“Yep I’m cleared, but I’ll have to take a rain check on the beer. I’m out of town myself for a few days.”
“No shit?” Cole sounded surprised.
Noah glanced back at Jess. With the argument rug pulled out from under her, she seemed to deflate. She sat down on one of the arm chairs and rested her head on the wing back. No doubt she was hanging on his every word, though.
“I thought I’d take advantage of my time off. Head for the mountains. I’ve been working way too hard lately.”
“Huh. Who knew. I don’t think you’ve taken a vacation as long as we’ve worked together.”
Not entirely true, but Cole had a point. Outside of his annual trek to his parents’ every holiday, Noah didn’t do vacations. If he wanted a beach, he had a dozen choices twenty minutes from his condo. Sight-seeing wasn’t a lot of fun by yourself.
“Yeah, well, I think I’m due for a nap. Did you find what you were looking for? On your trip?” He knew the answer, but Cole would expect him to ask.
“No. But we cracked a major larceny ring. Picked up a perp who’s been picking pockets in a dozen states. He thought he’d found himself the mother lode with that last job, if you know what I mean.”
Noah blew out a breath. That corroborated part of Jess’s story, and helped explain why the multi-billionaire starlet was travelling like a runaway teenager. “Did he have any information on his victim?”
Cole’s laugh sounded hollow. “Maybe. We are trying to backtrack over his route. It won’t take long to pick up her trail.”
Noah glanced over at Jessica. “Uh. Great. Anything else?”
“Nah. Well, there was one interesting thing, but it isn’t really pertinent to the investigation. We got the background checks on the household staff. One of the catering helpers is on the Homeland Security’s watch list. He’s Cuban, here illegally, which is what got him flagged. He probably shouldn’t have been on the staff list at all. He was one of those waiters the Kingsbury’s would bring in when they threw a big party, which they haven’t done in years.”
“Interesting. Did you send someone to question him anyway?”
“We tried. His listed address is old, and the landlord hasn’t heard from him in months. Anyway, enough work talk. Enjoy your R&R. If you want to get together this weekend, I will be at my sister’s house. Call me when you get home and we will go have a beer.”
“Great.” Noah hung up the phone, wondering about the abrupt change in topic at the end of that conversation. He turned to Jess. “When did you get off the Greyhound bus?”
Jess’s eyes had been slitted as though she were fighting sleep, but opened wide at his question. “Yesterday morning.”
Noah did a quick mental calculation. Cole would be reading passenger lists now, watching surveillance video, tracing who was on the bus with the thief. It wouldn’t take them long to trace her here.
And if they found Noah here with her, it would end his career. “Grab your bag. We’re checking out.”
Chapter 12
An hour down I75, Noah pulled off at a gas station to fill up his Highlander. They were already nearly to the outskirts of Chattanooga, where Jessica had insisted they drive. He didn’t trust her, but didn’t have any better idea about what to do next.
His stomach had its own idea. He pulled into the lot of a Denny’s, bustling with the early Sunday dinner crowd. “Hungry?”
Jess jumped. She had spent most of the drive staring out the passenger window, not saying a word.
He jerked his head toward the neon yellow sign over the door. “It’s not exactly haute cuisine, but I need some dinner.”
“I don’t feel like eating.” The words were defiant but her tone sounded exhausted.
“Then come in and keep me company. I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”
She shoved the baseball cap down over her head and slung the tattered backpack over her shoulder and tromped after him. Soon they were sliding into a vinyl-padded booth between a table full of teenagers and a family with one baby in a highchair and two more wiggling toddlers in booster seats.
Remnants of cigarette smoke mingled with the smells of bacon grease and fry oil, making Noah’s mouth water. It smelled homey and filling. The laminated menus were greasy, and he scanned through the choices for something that was likely to be drenched in butter and salt.
Across the table, Jess slurped down half a glass of water in about two swallows. She stared at the menu, at the ice swirling around in the cup, at the light fixtures. Anywhere but at him.
“How much money did you lose on the bus?”
That got her attention. Noah was beginning to crave those flashes of blue fire she kept shooting him with her eyes. With the hundreds of photos and video clips he had studied over the past year and a half, the feature of hers that he always saw first was her eyes.
Sure, the rest of her body, displayed in all of its lush beauty, was nice to look at. Hell, he had endured more than enough good-natured ribbing from some of the other agents about the “research” that he was assigned. And he couldn’t deny that photo after photo of her naked and scantily clad body affected him. He had painstakingly cataloged the photos with words—dates, locations, others in the photos, any other detail that could help establish a pattern.
Words didn’t have plump lips and rouge-tipped nipples; they didn’t have teasing smiles or lengths of perfectly toned legs. Words didn’t sparkle with humor, like her eyes. Or burn with anger, sadness, calculation, annoyance. With secrets. No one would ever believe that he could lose himself for hours in photos of her eyes when there was so much more of her there for the ogling.
“Is that how you guys found me?”
“It’s how I found you. My partner just got back from a trip to Las Vegas where he arrested a thief who had been targeting passengers on Greyhound buses.”
She shrugged and glanced away. The gesture was designed to look indifferent, but he didn’t miss the bleakness behind her eyes.
“Cole guessed about the cards, but he thought you were on a bender in Vegas. There were quite a few of those prepaid credit cards on that report. How many did you have on you? Surely the guy didn’t take them all. How much do you have left?”
“If I give you the rest, will you forget you found me here?”
Noah flinched. “No.”
A waitress finished unloading a tray of coffee across the aisle and turned to Noah and Jessica, paper and pen at the ready. “What can I get you two to eat?”
Jessica tried to waive the woman off.
The waitress raised an eyebrow. “Not even something to drink? Dessert? We have pie.”
He frowned. “You haven’t eaten all day.”
Jess shrugged. “That’s okay.”
Noah ordered a chicken dinner with a sal
ad, plus an extra side of bread. “And an extra plate.”
The waitress left and Jess glowered. “I don’t need your food.”
“What about my money? How much did you lose to the pickpocket? If I had to guess, quite a bit. I got a peek at the charges the guy was racking up before Cole left. He had one heck of a run at the casinos.”
The waitress came back and set a plate of bread and butter in between them. Jess bit her lip as she glanced at the food. He shoved the plate toward her, a knot forming in the pit of his stomach. “Let me guess. He took almost everything you had. Here, eat. It’s on me.”
She picked at the bread at first, just a few crumbs. Then a few more. He waited until she had downed most of her roll before he took one. The rest of his food came out quickly and this time she didn’t protest when he piled half of it on the extra plate and slid it across the table.
“I would ask what you are going to do in Chattanooga, but you probably won’t tell me,” he said between bites of chicken. “And maybe it’s better that I don’t know ahead of time. So instead, it’s your turn. Ask me something. Anything. Whatever you want.”
She twirled her fork in her mashed potatoes for a moment. “Do you have a big family?”
He paused, his cup halfway to his lips. Not what he was expecting. “No. My mother lives in California with her husband. I have two step-brothers.”
“Older or younger?”
“Younger. They’re both in high school.”
“Your father?”
“Dead.”
She was silent for a long moment.
Noah’s brothers were his mother’s second chance at life. After his dad died, she married a plastic surgeon and moved them to a ritzy suburb in Atherton, California. His brothers had grown up attending private schools and learning to golf on the weekends. It was a far cry from his working class childhood.
“Do you see your mother a lot, and the brothers?”
“Not really. They are all pretty busy with school and all that, and its several hours drive. My mom keeps busy with her charities. We talk on the phone mostly.”
“Oh.” He couldn’t decipher all the emotions that flickered across her face. Scorn, maybe, or sadness. The look that lingered was pity.
He turned his attention to his plate. Just because he got that same look of pity from his mother at their annual family Christmas dinner, didn’t mean that he had to take it from Jessica Kingsbury. Just because law enforcement didn’t earn him enough cash for a fancy country club membership didn’t make his job less worthwhile.
Noah shoveled the last bite of dinner into his mouth and glanced at Jess’s plate. Hers was mostly finished. She looked far more relaxed than he had seen her all day, her shoulders not as tense, and her mouth making an almost-smile as she ate. God she looked tired.
Neither of them spoke any more unnecessary words while he paid and they climbed back in the car. Within five miles, she was sound asleep in his passenger seat, head slumped against the seatbelt.
I75 met up with I24 and he took one of the downtown exits and looked for a place to stay for the night. He found an upscale-looking hotel that seemed to cater to tourists and left Jess snoozing in the car while he reserved a room.
When he got back with the keys, she was still there. He sighed in relief that she hadn’t bolted the moment he had stepped away. He opened the passenger door for her.
“Where are we?” she asked, making no move to unfasten her seatbelt.
“Vacation. Come on, sleeping beauty. Inside.”
She huffed but didn’t make a fuss as he handed her out and gave his keys to the valet. The room was a suite with the bedroom and a separate living room, and was a hell of a lot more expensive than the kind of places he normally stayed. She didn’t look impressed.
“Now what? You cuff me to the bed?”
An unexpected rush of heat hit him below the belt at the mental image of her naked, arms raised above her head, full breasts begging for his mouth. He felt his neck flush and he turned away from her to arrange his suitcase in the corner.
“You take the bedroom. Lock it if you want. I’ll take the couch.” He unzipped his bag and began to rifle through the contents as he tried to get the right head back under control. She didn’t move from behind him for far too many breaths. Breaths that did very little to slow the steady pounding of his heart.
Shit. Did she expect him to take those words as an offer?
Finally he heard her exhale, go into the bedroom, and shut the door behind her. Noah sat down on the couch and flipped on the TV. He must have scrolled through the channels at least three times before he realized that nothing was going to hold his attention for long.
He could hear the sounds of her opening and closing doors, a zip that must be her bag, the click of the lock on the living room-side bathroom door. Noah unfolded the sofa bed and found the extra pillows stashed in a closet.
The shower turned on and Noah lay back on his bed for the night, trying not to think about Jessica Kingsbury, naked and soapy just a few feet away from him. It didn’t work. It didn’t help that he could vividly picture one of her Playboy spreads from his research file. Shower scenes.
His groin tightened almost painfully and he tried to picture his father’s face. His mother. Cole. Puppy dogs. Hell, Cutlass.
He turned off the light, curled onto his side, and threw a pillow over his head and settled in for a long night.
***
It was late before Jessica truly fell asleep. Or maybe it was early the next morning. The last wisps of evening sunlight were gone. The traffic fell silent. And still she waited, huddled alone under starchy sheets with a shoe tucked under her pillow. Anxiety made her stomach knot and kept her pulse from slowing.
Noah Grayson seemed like a good man. One of the few she had ever met. But good men always had a dark side. Just because she hadn’t seen it yet, didn’t mean Noah was any different. She had not missed the expression on his face when she mentioned the handcuffs—the dilated pupils, the sharp intake of his breath. The way his gaze had raked her figure.
The way he had turned away in disgust.
That was a stupid, dangerous thing for her to do. Some men would have broken the lock on her door. Some would just knock.
So she waited in the dark to see which kind of man Noah was.
But all she heard was the TV, the creak of springs, and silence. She silently told herself, over and over again, that she was stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid for walking into Wilson’s trap. Stupid for getting herself into this mess in the first place.
But the stupidest thing was how the thought of Noah coming through that door made her feel hot all over. She remembered the feel of his lips on hers. Imagined his strong, sure hands on her breasts, her thighs, her sex. His lean muscled arms holding her, his heat surrounding her. She shivered and ached, alone and safe in the bed.
And she hated herself all the more.
She didn’t know when she finally slept or for how long, but the sounds of a busy hotel—doors opening and closing, chattering in the hallways, water rushing through pipes in the walls behind her finally woke her. That and the smell of coffee.
She put on her clothes from the day before and splashed water on her face in the bathroom, then tentatively unlocked the bedroom door. Noah sat at the desk chair wearing jeans and a white t-shirt with a fresh looking bandage on his arm. The TV was tuned to one of the all-news channels. The kind that made Jessica dizzy with the constant scrolling of words and numbers across the screen, words that never sat still long enough for her to concentrate. She preferred to hear the voices of the newscasters, but Noah had muted the TV. Maybe to keep from disturbing her.
He motioned toward a coffee cup and a Styrofoam takeout container on the table across from him. “Eat first; then we can talk.”
She turned her back away from the flashing television and peeked inside the container. Melted butter pooled on top of soggy pancakes next to a pair of limp sausage links. There was a plastic cup wit
h a few pale strawberry slices swimming in sugary water. Her stomach rumbled at the spicy sweet scent.
Her first forkful tuned to ash in her mouth when she saw her backpack leaning against the leg of Noah’s chair, just out of her reach. She had left that…
She left it in the bathroom.
Swallowing the food in her mouth turned a thousand times more difficult, even with a gulp of cold bitter coffee to wash it down.
Noah saw the direction of her look and hefted her bag into his lap. “Maybe we should talk first after all.”
Chapter 13
Jess had never mastered a poker face. Charles used to tease her that he she had a billboard for a forehead. She was great on stage, but that was her work face. The one with the pouty lips and the wide eyes and that little half-smirk that she had perfected in front of a mirror. She could fake drunkenness or an orgasm or desire. She couldn’t fake calm.
After the way he had shut her out last night, Jess doubted Noah would be distracted by bedroom eyes.
So she sat, shivering in cold and fear, while his eyes bore into hers, knowing that she looked guilty as hell and scared to death of his reaction. There was a small chance that he hadn’t found anything in the bag. Lightning struck every day, and runaway girls turned into Hollywood success stories.
Her reached into the open top and withdrew a padded manila envelope.
Some chances were just too small to count on.
Out of the envelope, he pulled a necklace. Set in gold with four large circular stones, each surrounded by four smaller ones and a tear-drop dangling from the center. “You have exactly three minutes to convince me not to turn you in on charges of obstruction of justice and insurance fraud.”
She licked her parched lips. “Don’t forget extortion and money laundering. Isn’t that what you’re really investigating me for?”
His eyes narrowed. “If that’s a confession, I recommend you save it for the judge.”