At Close Range

by Jessica Andersen

  It was the woman beneath who mattered.

  That realization warmed her, reassured her, and she pushed his pants down over his hips, where they snagged on her legs and the place he had her pressed to the wall.

  “Allow me,” he said between quick, deep breaths and long, slow kisses. And before she could brace herself, he’d scooped her up, turned away from the wall and moved to the dresser.

  Seeing his intent, and approving with a startled flash of heat, she swept her arm across the surface, sending shells and coral flying. He propped her on the waist-high wood surface and kissed her, then stepped into the vee between her legs.

  “Too many clothes,” she said when the kiss broke, and pushed him away so she could slide off the dresser.

  Leaving her shirt and bra looped over her shoulders, she wriggled out of her pants, panties and shoes while he shrugged out of his pants, and went back for his wallet.

  He held up a single packet. “I’ve only got one condom. We’ll have to make it worthwhile.”

  She grinned and boosted herself back onto the dresser. “Bring it on.”

  She didn’t mention that she had a couple of condoms in her overnight bag, packed because…hell, she didn’t know what she’d been thinking, but wasn’t it lucky that she had?

  He sheathed himself and moved to face her. Their bodies were perfectly aligned, only touching where he placed his hands on her thighs and she pressed her palms against the hard planes of his chest. The light from outdoors gleamed down on them, frosting the wide line of his shoulders with blue and green, as though they were underwater.

  Her heart pounded up into her throat when he leaned forward to kiss her, and stepped into her, until he was pressed at the entrance to her body, to her heart.

  No, she told herself, even as she lifted her hands to frame his face as they kissed.

  Not her heart. Her heart was safe. She would make sure of that.

  But as he slid his hands behind her, that second excuse flitted through her mind.

  It’s just sex.

  She told herself that as he eased himself into her, filling her, stretching her until she felt as though it should have hurt but didn’t. She told herself it was just sex when her heart expanded in her chest, filling her to bursting, and he began to move within her, they began to move together.

  She told herself it was just sex as the pleasure coiled within her, hard and ready and wanting. She dug her fingernails into his shoulders and closed her eyes, unable to watch the exquisite power of his face, the way his eyes had darkened in the blue-green light, the way they suddenly saw inside her.

  Saw her.

  “Look at me,” he ordered. “Look at me.”

  She did, because she was helpless to do otherwise as the tidal wave ripped through her. She looked at him just in time to see him climax, to see the power of his pleasure and feel it deep inside her body.

  Inside her heart.

  And in that moment, in that hesitating heartbeat before she came a second time, she knew the final, awesome, terrifying truth.

  It wasn’t just sex.

  It was something much bigger.

  WOW, SETH THOUGHT unimaginatively. Just wow.

  And oh, boy, was he in trouble.

  After a long moment of leaning into Cassie, leaning against her, he righted himself on rubbery legs, scooped her up and deposited her on the bed. Then he made a vague gesture toward the bathroom, and escaped.

  He took care of the condom, then ran cold water into the basin and splashed his face, his chest, the back of his neck, anywhere he could reach that might do the trick. He wasn’t trying to wash her away, though.

  He was trying to pull himself the hell together.

  He hadn’t expected this any more than he’d expect to climb out of bed one morning and find a tiger in his bathroom. It was that huge. He’d gone into her arms expecting physical satisfaction. He’d gotten it, all right, but he’d gotten something else, as well. Emotion. And Seth couldn’t afford to do emotion.

  Not this time. Not with this woman. He’d made that mistake before, confusing good sex with love. Robyn had been a wonderful woman, but not his match. She and Cassie were similar in that way.

  He grabbed a towel and scrubbed his face dry, trying to erase the faint, unaccountable sting of guilt. “We didn’t promise each other anything,” he said aloud, but quietly enough so Cassie wouldn’t hear.

  In fact, he’d been careful not to promise.

  There was a soft knock on the bathroom door. “Seth? You okay?”

  He knotted the towel around his hips and opened the door to find Cassie on the other side. She had buttoned her shirt, but her long, bare legs stretched out below, making him wonder what she had on underneath.

  She took a breath. “This doesn’t have to be weird, okay?” She held out a hand.

  “Come back to bed. I’ll be disappointed if you run.”

  He took her hand, and held it, waiting until she looked up at him. “I can’t promise anything.”

  “I’m not asking you to. Just come back to bed.”

  So he followed her gentle urging and climbed between the covers with her. He cuddled her close because they both seemed to need it. During the remainder of the night, he made full use of the two condoms she produced from her overnight bag, because they both wanted it. But even as he tried to armor his heart against the softer emotions she brought out in him, he realized that he should have promised her something, after all.

  He should have promised her that their relationship would end when the case did.

  He was done with forever.

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Cassie felt the bed shift as Seth rolled away from her and stood. She kept her eyes shut, because she wasn’t at her best at haven’t-had-coffee-yet o’clock in the morning. And because she was a wimp. She didn’t want to do the awkward morning-after thing.

  She’d asked him to stay and he had stayed. That should be enough for now. He was finding his way out of the grief of a marriage that had ended before he could fix it.

  She was finally ready to try holding her own against a man with opinions as strong as her own. They could figure the rest out together.

  At least that was what she told herself. But when he leaned over the bed dressed in last night’s clothes, and kissed her on the cheek, she had to force herself not to move, not to grab onto him and cling. That was the needy part of her. The part that had allowed Lee to manipulate her into his notion of love. The part that she refused to bring into her relationship with Seth.

  So she kept still and listened to him leave the room and shut the door. His footsteps sounded along the walkway outside, followed by the sound of a key in the lock of his room.

  Once the door shut again and he was in his room, she sat up slowly, sensually, feeling the pull of long-unused muscles and the gut-deep satisfaction of having been well loved. She gave herself a moment to savor the sensations and the memories, then rose and headed for the shower.

  The ring of her cell phone brought her up short. She crossed the room, dug the unit out of her crumpled jeans, and flipped it open. “Hello?”

  “We’ve got a suspect,” Alissa’s voice said, sharp with satisfaction. “The witnesses remembered enough about the vehicle they saw to put us on track, and the sketch I developed from them matches the owner. Denver Lyttle. No rap sheet, but he was dishonorably discharged from the military two years ago after being trained as—

  get this—an explosives expert.”

  “Wow. I—wow!” Cassie faltered as reality made a quick return. The previous night notwithstanding, she wasn’t in Florida for a romantic getaway. She and Seth were chasing a murderer. At least they had been. It sounded like the case was breaking open without them. She swallowed a bubble of professional disappointment and said,

  “Great work, Lissa! Is Lyttle in custody?”

  “Tucker just picked him up. They’ll be here any minute.”

  Through the thin wall, Cassie heard Seth’s phone ring, heard the de
ep, dark rumble of his voice answering.

  “Cass? You there?” Alissa demanded.

  Cassie yanked her attention back to her friend. “Sorry. I’m here. Seth and I are just about to head over to Fitz’s place. Assuming that the fingerprints were fakes—

  which seems reasonable if our guy is in custody already—we’ll ask Fitz how he’s connected to Denver Lyttle.”

  She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice at the idea of doing mop-up work. She should be thrilled to hear that the Bear Claw cops had caught a solid suspect.

  So why wasn’t she?

  “Seth?” Alissa’s voice caught a teasing edge. “You two are on a first name basis now?”

  Cassie was grateful for the knock on her door. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later to see how Lyttle’s interrogation went.” She flipped the phone shut and blew out a breath, unable to explain the sudden churning in her stomach.

  The knock came again. “You ready?”

  “In a minute,” she called, damning the heat that touched her core at the sound of his voice. “I’ll meet you by the car.”

  Within five minutes she was dressed and packed for the flight home, but her system still wasn’t level. She was churned up by the thought that Alissa and the others had nabbed a solid suspect. But why was it such a big deal? Was she so insecure that she needed to be in on the collar? Muttering, she slung her overnight bag over her shoulder, put her hand to the doorknob leading out, and then paused and turned back to the room.

  It was the same room she’d walked into the evening before, the same plain furniture, the same coral and shell accents. But it carried memories now. Memories of Seth pressing her against the wall and taking her under with his kiss. Memories of lovemaking on the dresser. In the bed. Memories of the two of them.

  And she got it.

  She wasn’t upset that the others might have caught the murderer without her. She was bothered that with the case closed, she would lose her new partner. Seth would head back to the Denver field office and she’d go back to being the least popular member of the Bear Claw P.D.

  “Don’t be silly,” she told herself. They were grown-ups with cars, e-mail and telephones. The end of the case didn’t mean the end of their…whatever it was. In fact, it would probably be easier for them to get to know each other from neutral corners, as it were.

  Cheered, she pushed through the door and closed it behind her, feeling only a twinge of freshly minted nostalgia at the sight of the stained-glass lamps outside.

  This wasn’t the end. It was a beginning.

  She hoped.

  WHEN CASSIE climbed into the rented SUV, Seth handed her a cardboard cup of coffee and a grocery store pastry, both courtesy of the motel management. “Did Alissa update you on the suspect?”

  He noticed that she avoided his eyes as she accepted the food and drink. She took a sip of the coffee, then another, longer sip, and sighed. “Thank God. Caffeine.”

  Then she glanced at him and nodded. “Yep. Denver Lyttle. The connection sounds pretty solid, though we’ll want better evidence than just witness reports of a vehicle and a man.”

  “True enough,” Seth agreed. Eyewitnesses were notoriously unreliable. Hard evidence wasn’t. He started the engine, referred to the directions and headed them towards Key Lobo and Fitz’s place. Then he lowered his voice and said, “Look, Cassie.

  I wanted to talk to you about—”

  She held up a hand to stop him. “Wait.” When he paused, she tucked her coffee cup into the dashboard holder and clasped her hands together as though concentrating on picking just the right words. “I know we need to talk about what happened. But not now, okay? We’re on duty and I don’t think it’s appropriate. Alissa and Tucker have had to draw some pretty strict lines between work and…not work. I think we should try to do the same.”

  Though he was uncomfortable with the way she’d compared the two of them to the newly engaged couple, Seth knew she was right. There was only so far they could blur the lines without stepping over.

  So he nodded. “Fine. We’ll talk on the flight home. For now, we’ll concentrate on Fitz. My people finished with the fingerprints, and sure enough, they were laid in synthetic oil, inconsistent with a human fingerprint. Ergo, they’re fake. But why?

  We’ll need to ask Fitz about this Denver Lyttle character. There should be some connection if Lyttle’s our man.”

  They talked sporadically about the case over the twenty minutes it took to reach Key Lobo and park on the dead-end street where Fitz lived. His was the only house on the street, with a generous screening of trees and shrubs separating him from the nearest neighbors, giving the cul-de-sac a sense of privacy. There was a late-model sedan in the cement driveway of the single-level waterfront bungalow, and a small boat bobbed at a dock beyond.

  Seth opened his door and jumped down from the SUV. “Looks like a pretty sweet retirement setup to me.”

  Cassie joined him on the short walkway leading to Fitz’s house. “I prefer gardens over all this cement.”

  The comment brought an image to his mind, one of Cassie kneeling in a freshly turned garden, surrounded by plants and a white picket fence. That was what she wanted, he knew. That, plus a loving husband and a baby to complete the picture.

  Not someone like him, with a half-finished gym at the back of his house and no intentions of remarrying.

  “Varitek?” She raised an eyebrow. “You okay?”

  He knew she’d deliberately used his last name to emphasize the professional distance. He nodded curtly. “Let’s go.”

  Aware that she’d slipped her weapon from her mid-back holster, he walked to the door and knocked, not expecting a problem, but braced for one nonetheless.

  The knock echoed through the house. A bird of some sort screeched in protest, and he heard a man’s voice curse over the background chatter of a television news program. Footsteps approached, quick and measured, sounding nothing like an old man’s stride. Then the door opened and Fitzroy O’Malley stood in the gap looking ten years younger than he had the last time Varitek had seen him.

  Fitz was five-ten and built like a bulldog, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and muddy brown eyes nearly lost amidst the crow’s-feet of years spent outdoors.

  Seth remembered from previous jobs in Bear Claw that Fitz and Chief Parry had looked like bookends when they stood opposite each other, both tough and weathered and not about to put up with any garbage from the public, the perps, or the other cops.

  The former evidence specialist still looked like a bulldog, but now he looked like a tan, well-fed, well-rested bulldog.

  One that narrowed its eyes and bared its teeth at the intruders on his front step.

  “Varitek.” The name wasn’t quite a greeting. Fitz’s eyes slid over to Cassie. “That’d make you Dumont. The one nobody likes.” He returned his attention to Seth. “I had a call that you were on your way.”

  Seth supposed he should have expected that the information would leak within the Bear Claw P.D., but he knew from experience that Fitz preferred straight talk to playing nice, so he said, “Consider yourself lucky that you’ve moved down on our suspect list. Since we’re here, how about you tell us who would want to implicate you in a pair of murders, and how you know Denver Lyttle.”

  Fitz snorted and glanced at Cassie. “You two want to come inside, or does the new forensics department recommend front porch interrogations?”

  Cassie bristled and swung around so she fully faced the door, away from her backup position. “Listen, you—”

  A shot split the air.

  Fitz lurched back into the house, clutching his chest.

  And everything went to hell.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Everybody down!” Cassie shouted. She flinched when a second shot slammed into the vinyl siding beside her head. She grabbed Seth, or he grabbed her, she wasn’t quite sure, and they lunged into the house together.

  Seth kicked the door shut as a third s
hot blasted clean through the panel and buried itself in a new-looking sofa.

  Cassie smelled blood, looked down and saw the red liquid leaking from between the fingers Fitz had clamped to his chest.

  He needed help. Fast.

  A fourth shot took out the window above her head as she shouted, “I’ll call it in and deal with Fitz. Cover us!” She ducked down and crab-walked toward the phone while Seth pulled his weapon and edged an eye above the windowsill, trying to get a bead on the gunman.

  She called 911 and gave the address, then crouched down beneath the hallway table to check Fitz’s wound.

  Seth fired off a couple of rounds and the gunman answered with a shot that shattered a water glass on the table over her head. Cassie clenched her teeth and forced her fingers not to shake as she tugged the older man’s hand away from his bloody chest.

  She trusted Seth to protect her.

  The bullet had gone in higher than she’d thought, which was good, because it meant muscle and bone damage rather than lung and heart. She hoped so, because she had a few new questions to ask Fitz. Not seeing an obvious exit wound, she put the older man’s hands back on his chest, covered them with her own, and pressed down, trying to stop the blood.

  Seth cursed as three more shots whistled through the broken window near his head. “The bastard’s hiding behind our rental. Must’ve been following us.”

  Cassie glanced at Fitz, who had gone gray-white. “Or else he was waiting for us.”

  Her voice sounded suddenly loud in the absence of gunshots. Silence descended on the scene, broken only by Fitz’s labored breathing and the crackle of shattered glass.

  Then, faded by distance, they heard sirens.

  “Cavalry’s coming,” Seth said, “and our guy rabbited. Stay here, I’ll be back.” He stood quickly, and slipped out the door before Cassie could tell him not to go.