Sure Bet

by Maggie Price

  "Yeah." Alex kept his gaze locked on hers. "Whoever it was could have done a lot of things." His eyes were no longer cop's eyes, flat and cool. They were full of swirling storms and emotion.

  As her sluggish thought processes caught up, she felt the blood drain from her cheeks and freeze around her heart. She tried to read any signals her body was sending her, but the drug still hung too heavy in her system. "Was I…raped?"

  "I don't think anyone touched you," Alex answered, his voice even and steady. "When I got to you, your robe was still belted and your gown pulled down. The bed linens aren't overly rumpled."

  Despite the logic of Alex's words she felt vulnerable, exposed, confused. Even her sense of time felt distorted. "Put me down. Alex, please." She desperately needed to regain the control stolen from her while she lay unconscious.

  "Morgan—"

  "I'm okay. I'm okay." When her body gave an involuntary shudder she felt his arms tighten around her. "Just put me down."

  "All right." He settled her on her feet, keeping one supportive hand gripped on her arm. "You'll probably feel light-headed. I did."

  "Yeah." She leaned back against the glass wall and waited for the world to stop tilting. Her head pounded and her legs felt as wobbly as if she'd jogged ten miles. She just needed to get warm again, she told herself, even as steam swirled and the hot spray pounded her flesh. She glanced down, aware for the first time that the sheeting water had transformed her crimson robe and nightgown into a cloying second skin.

  "I want you to stay in the bedroom while I search this place," Alex said.

  Her gaze jerked up to meet his. "You think whoever broke in is still inside?"

  "It doesn't feel that way, but I could be wrong. Someone—I'll call them he—somehow got in without deactivating the alarm or setting it off. It's a good bet he left the same way and is long gone. I just need to make sure."

  "I can help you search."

  "Not a good idea. He planted at least one audio bug inside, maybe a camera or two. If someone is watching, we don't want them to see us conduct a search. I'll just start looking around, casually ask if you know where the movers left a certain box of records I need. Something like that."

  "Okay." Morgan put a hand to her aching temple. "What do you want me to do?"

  Alex remained silent, the muscles in his jaw tightening. She could almost see his mind working in the dark depths of his brown eyes.

  "Get dressed," he said after a minute. "If whatever you put on has a pocket, check to make sure there's not a transmitter in it. If everything's okay after I do the search, I'll give you a signal. You go down to the kitchen, look in a cabinet, then say we're out of the flavored coffee beans I like. Grab your purse and keys and drive to the nearest grocery store that has an indoor pay phone."

  "Has to be a grocery store?"

  "Has to be. There might be a transmitter planted on the Beemer. If someone hears you say you're going to the store to buy coffee beans, that better damn well be where you go and what you do. Use the store's pay phone to call Rackowitz's pager." Alex narrowed his eyes. "When I went outside this morning I didn't see her car. Where is she?"

  Morgan slicked back her wet hair and forced herself to think. "The pool supply company delivered the wrong chemicals. Sara said she'd go by there this morning and make the exchange. She mentioned something about running a couple of other errands while she was at it."

  "Okay. Let Rackowitz know what we're dealing with. Tell her I want Wade Crawford here on the double to check his not-so-state-of-the-art security system so we'll know how it got breeched. Have her remind Crawford we've got audio bugs so when he gets here he needs to talk like he showed up to do routine maintenance on the alarm system. Also tell Rackowitz to have one of the department's chemists put on a disguise and get over here to take a sample of our blood. I want to know what drug knocked us out."

  "All right." Morgan paused. "Spurlock sent whoever it was who got in, didn't he?"

  "Spurlock is the logical suspect."

  "Because I defended myself against Colaneri. I wasn't wearing a wire or carrying a bug, so I should have just let him pat me down like he wanted." She closed her eyes against the imagined feel of the thug's hands groping her flesh. "If I had let him search me, this wouldn't have happened."

  "You don't know that." Alex's expression remained cool, but the anger was there, darkening his eyes and his voice. He stepped closer, the spray hitting him in the chest, plastering his dark hair against his flesh. "What we both do know is what Colaneri is capable of. There's no telling what that bastard would have done if you had let him put his hands on you."

  "That's what I told myself while I was locked in that bathroom with him," she said. Her throat was raw and hot, and her heart was beating in hard, jerky pulses. "Now, I'm not so sure what I did was the right thing."

  "Don't waste time second-guessing yourself, Morgan."

  She saw the hesitation in his eyes before Alex settled his hands on her shoulders. She knew he'd given quick thought to the promise they'd made not to touch each other unless duty called. His hands were warm, steady and reassuring, and she was glad, very glad, he'd ignored his promise.

  The steam rose, clouding the room, blocking out everything around them. The sole person in her world at this moment was Alex Blade.

  "Spurlock showed a lot of interest in the business proposition I discussed with him last night," Alex said. "He's too careful, though, to jump into something. He's wary and distrustful and he'll keep checking everything about us until he's satisfied we're not cops. What happened here last night could have everything to do with that, and not your encounter with Colaneri."

  "So you think Spurlock sent someone over to see if we're who we claim to be?"

  "Yeah. You can bet whoever came in checked to make sure my clothes were hanging in the same closet as yours and our toilet articles shared space in this bathroom."

  "Thankfully, they do." She frowned. "He could have seen those things if he'd broken in while we were both gone."

  "True, but that wouldn't have clued him in to our sleeping arrangement," Alex pointed out. "Cops working undercover don't sleep together as part of their assignment." He shoved a hand through his wet hair. "We're damn lucky I fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV. If I'd been sacked out in the bedroom down the hall, we'd be in bad shape."

  Morgan closed her eyes, opened them. "Dead maybe."

  "Maybe. I intend to make sure Crawford turns this place into a fortress so what happened last night doesn't get repeated. Just in case though, I'll sleep on the couch from now on."

  A small panic budded in Morgan's chest. "I don't want to think about this happening a second time. About someone drugging us again, breaking in, doing God knows what to us when we can't defend ourselves."

  "It won't happen again." Alex's fingers tightened on her shoulders. "After we figure out how they drugged us and bypassed the security system, we'll know how to prevent a recurrence."

  "Can't we get an idea of that by watching the tapes from our own surveillance cameras?"

  "Probably. But we can't chance opening the panel on the hidden video room until we know for sure our uninvited visitor didn't leave his own cameras sitting around."

  "Right. I should have thought of that." Morgan rubbed at the throb in her forehead. "My brain is operating at half speed."

  "It'll take time for the drug to wear off." Alex glanced down at the cotton pajama bottoms plastered to his legs. "Just in case there's a camera planted in the bedroom, I've got to peel these off before I walk out of here." He arched a dark brow. "Thought I'd better warn you."

  She forced a weak smile. "All this fog, I won't see a thing," she said, then pulled in a breath that was as shaky as she felt on the inside.

  As if reading her thoughts, he took her face in his hands, running his thumbs gently over her cheeks. "We had a close call, Morgan," he said quietly. "We'll probably both feel a sharp twist in the stomach whenever we think about what could have happened to
us." The shrug he gave was in direct contrast to the look of intense concern in his eyes. "We got lucky and survived. In undercover work, survival is what counts. You going to be okay, partner?"

  She stared up at him, absorbing the comfort of his touch. She'd learned enough to know that luck was a small, very small, part of the picture. Cops who survived undercover work did so because they kept a cool head, thought fast on their feet and had good instincts. This man who had taken care of her when she couldn't care for herself possessed all those qualities.

  Between one heartbeat and the next, she knew. She'd gone and done it after all. Let him sneak into her, right through the walls she'd erected. She was on the verge of falling in love.

  Oh God, no, that was wrong, she countered while desperately trying to reinforce the walls she felt crumbling around her. What she felt right now was physically weak and very out of herself. And, despite the fact she was a cop, the woman in her was experiencing an attack of sheer feminine distress. She was human, after all, susceptible to certain basic fears. Knowing what could have happened to her while she lay unconscious had nausea roiling in her stomach. So, it wasn't surprising she felt vulnerable and very grateful to the man who in a sense had rescued her. The man who currently stood between herself and danger.

  When her system rid itself of the drug and her queasy stomach settled, her sense of control would return, she reasoned. Her emotional state would calm and her thinking processes level out. At least, she hoped all those things happened.

  "Morgan?"

  "I'm okay, partner." Which was a lie. She was immensely not okay. On several levels.

  Alex nodded. "Let's give the audience our best performance."

  He turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. "Darling, that was great," he said, sliding into his Alexander Donovan persona. "Your skills in the shower never cease to amaze me."

  "Alex," she said quietly. When he turned and looked at her through the steamy air, she mouthed the words Be careful.

  His expression went solemn. "Count on it, Mrs. Donovan."

  * * *

  Late that afternoon, Alex stood in the small room secreted beneath the mansion's staircase. He stared at the wall of video monitors, his gaze tracking the intruder's shadowy figure as he stepped out of the master bedroom, a flashlight's pencil-thin beam leading his way. The man wore a black T-shirt and jeans, black gloves and a black gas mask. There was no way to ID him.

  Movement in the doorway caught Alex's attention. "I figured out how he got in and out without setting off the alarm," Wade Crawford said as he stepped inside.

  When the Vice cop arrived at the mansion, he had used a "sweeper" to determine last night's visitor had planted five audio bugs. Instead of destroying them, Crawford scrambled their codes so each transmitted static, leaving anyone listening on the other end to wonder if their equipment had been discovered or was simply malfunctioning. Crawford then began running a systems check on the alarm to determine how the intruder bypassed it.

  "How?" Alex asked.

  "He got on the roof and went through a wall into the attic."

  "A wall?"

  "A hole in the wall," Crawford amended. As on the day he'd installed the alarm, the Vice cop wore blue work pants and a white shirt that displayed the logo of a security company over one pocket. A leather thong tied back his shaggy, dark hair from his unshaven face.

  "There are several peaks in the roof covered by grates," Crawford explained. "They match the exterior so you don't really notice them. Take off a grate and a man can sometimes fit through the hole."

  Alex looked back at the monitors, watching the intruder's image as he used the penlight to navigate across the kitchen, followed the beam down a hallway, through the study, then back up the staircase.

  "The guy's wiry," Crawford said, watching the monitors. "Probably wasn't a tight fit for him to slip through the hole after he unscrewed the grate."

  Alex gave Crawford a level look. "You told me you armed the attic's trapdoor into the garage, and the walk-through door that opens between the attic and the storage room. If the wires to either of those doors had been cut, the alarm should have sounded."

  "It would have, if the wires had been cut. They weren't." Crawford dipped a hand into the tool belt slung on his hips and pulled out a magnifying glass. "It took this and a couple of hours of my time to spot how he did it."

  "Did what?"

  "Used a length of jump wire with an alligator clamp on each end," Crawford explained. "Standing in the attic, the intruder attached one clamp to the alarm wire on one side of the door, and the second clamp to the alarm wire on the opposite side of the door. Doing that allowed electricity to flow through the wire connected to the clamps. He then picked the lock on the door and walked in."

  "And since there was no interruption in the electrical current, the alarm didn't know it had been breeched."

  "You got it. And if the alligator clamps hadn't left marks in the alarm wiring, I still wouldn't know how he got in."

  "Hell." Alex shoved a hand through his hair. "So we know how he got in and out. From the tapes we've got, we know he took his time looking around while planting five audio bugs."

  "One location being the master bedroom. Good thing you maintained cover when you found your partner drugged on the bed."

  The mention of Morgan had Alex setting his jaw. The memory of her lying drugged and helpless on that bed plagued him. Knowing the man who'd broken in could have done anything he damn well pleased to her, anything, tightened the knots already in his gut.

  Alex clenched his fists as emotions swirled and tightened and threatened to strangle him. His reaction was more, much more than a cop wanting to protect his partner. He was a man, craving a woman who had unearthed feelings in him he had never before felt. A man who knew full well how huge a mistake it would be to involve himself with this one woman.

  A man who was beyond caring about consequences.

  "Blade?"

  Alex turned to find Crawford examining him with curiosity.

  "Where'd you go, man?"

  "Just thinking." Alex looked back at the monitors. "He's wearing a gas mask, so it's obvious they used some sort of gas to drug us. I just wish I knew for sure how they did it."

  "Yeah," Crawford nodded. "Can't help you there, pal."

  "I can."

  Alex shifted at the sound of Morgan's voice, and instantly felt the ache of need settle inside him. She stood in the doorway, dressed in cutoffs and a plunging, electric-blue halter top. Her blond hair was piled messily on her head and her mouth was glossed a rich red. She appeared for all the world like the confident, self-assured Morgan Donovan. But Alex knew her now. He looked past the veneer and saw the same wariness in her blue eyes he'd seen that morning when she stood in the shower with him, ashen-faced and trembling.

  He had to forcibly stop himself from reaching out to her.

  "You figured out how they drugged us?" he asked.

  "Sara and I did," Morgan said. Easing into the already crowded room, she held out her palm, displaying a small length of black plastic tubing. "We spent most of the day digging around in the flower beds next to the house, looking for footprints and whatever." Morgan shifted her gaze between the two men. "You know that bed on the east side where the big hydrangea is?"

  Crawford flashed a grin. "I don't know a hydrangea from a swamp lily," he said, his voice sliding into a deep Louisiana drawl. "I'd be more than willing to let you teach me."

  Alex aimed a cold, level look at the Vice cop. "Officer McCall's duties don't cover botany lessons."

  Anchoring his thumbs in his tool belt, Crawford arched a dark brow. "I see."

  Alex met Morgan's gaze. "I know where the hydrangea is." He scowled. "Maybe."

  She rolled her eyes. "I'll show you later. Anyway, Sara spotted some chips of mortar in that flower bed. We looked closer and found a hole drilled in the mortar between the bricks. I came in and checked—the hole goes all the way through the baseboard in the study."
She handed Alex the piece of rubber tubing. "That was sticking out of the baseboard."

  "Now we know how they drugged us," he said. "They used a length of tubing to pump in some sort of knockout gas."

  "Makes sense," Crawford agreed. "It would have been circulated throughout the entire place by the central air-conditioning system. All they had to do was pump it in, wait for it to take effect, then put a ladder up to the roof."

  Morgan blinked. "Ladder?"

  "Crawford figured out how they bypassed the alarm," Alex said, then gave her the details.

  Morgan slid Crawford a look. "What's to stop that from happening again?"

  "I wired all the grates."

  "To the alarm system?" she asked.

  "Yeah." He smiled. "I also connected all the grates to a battery-operated device that works on the same principle as a stun gun, only with more kick. Anyone touches one of those grates, they'll find out what it feels like to get dumped into a hot frying pan."

  "Drilling the hole would have made a lot of noise," Alex said, rolling the piece of tubing between his thumb and finger. "It had to have been done while Morgan and I were both gone."

  "Last night," she said. "Otherwise the flakes of mortar would have soaked into the dirt after one watering from the sprinkler system." She met Alex's gaze. "That's probably why we didn't see Colaneri again after he and Spurlock went inside to confer. Spurlock sent him here to drill while we ate dinner."

  "Sounds like you two have it figured out." Crawford pulled a plastic evidence bag out of his tool belt and held it out so Alex could drop the tubing inside. "I'll take this to the lab to see if they can peg what kind of gas went through it."

  Crawford slid the bag into the pocket of his shirt, then looked back at the monitors where the man's shadowy form prowled past the hidden cameras. "Since you guys are still among the living, I'd say your cover held up."

  "I think this confirms that," Morgan said, then tugged an envelope out of the pocket of her cutoffs and handed it to Alex.

  "What is it?" Crawford asked.

  "An invitation," Morgan explained. "One of Spurlock's gatekeepers trotted it over just as Sara was driving off."