by Anne Woodard
At the thought of the sex, the ache within her blossomed. She could feel the wetness and the heat so intensely that she was sure he must be aware of it, too. He had to be. He knew everything—about her, about her needs.
She licked her lips, nervously weighing the risk of punishment for speaking against the possibility of relief.
“Professor?”
He was so absorbed in contemplating the statue that he didn’t even bother to look up. “Hmmm?”
“The…the other stuff? It’s there in the boxes?”
The need was stronger now, more insistent. Her skin was hot and flushed with wanting.
For the first time since he’d slit open the box containing the stolen statue of Kali, he focused all his attention on her.
“It’s there.”
She would have laughed out loud in sheer relief, but he took these things too seriously to permit any laughter. She licked her lips instead, savoring the thought of what was to come.
The eight arms of the statue cast a shadow that looked like a large and hungry spider crawling across the polished wood of the desk toward her.
And then he was coming around the desk toward her, and she thought he was like that statue, beautiful and terrifying, all at the same time.
She didn’t dare move out of her seat. Couldn’t move, because he was looking at her, weighing her, and she didn’t dare risk being found wanting.
Now that he was in front of her, without the desk to shield him, she could see that he wanted her. The knowledge gave her courage.
He stretched out his hand and stroked her as he’d stroked the statue, brushed her hair behind her ear, traced the curve of her jaw and throat and breast.
“I love your eyes,” he said. “They’re beautiful. Like water—blue-green one minute, black the next. It’s very…erotic. Did you know that?”
She shook her head. Her pulse hammered in her ears, drowning out everything but his voice.
His fingertips lingered on the point of her breast, making her nipple prick beneath the light cotton blouse she wore. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
“And your breasts.”
She stopped breathing. His fingers tightened around the nipple, pinching hard. A jolt of heat shot through her. He had always been able to find that perfect point just before pleasure tipped over into pain.
“I love your breasts.”
He leaned forward until he loomed above her. His eyes were black holes, his exquisite features starkly outlined by shadows. The light from the desk lamp behind him formed a nimbus of light about his head, making the shadows seem even darker.
His fingers on her tightened, drawing an involuntary yip of pain.
“No one must ever know about any of this,” he growled.
The pain drew her half out of her chair.
“No one, understand?”
“No one will know, Professor. Trust me. I haven’t breathed a word to anyone. Not a word. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.”
She had to force the words out in little gasps. Her chest felt tight, as though her ribs were closing like a vise, squeezing the air out of her lungs and the blood out of her heart. Her skin burned. The aching need inside her made her muscles quiver.
So many needs. So many irresistible needs.
She curled her hands around his wrist and looked up into his beautiful, beautiful face. “Please, Professor. Please.”
He smiled then and let go of her nipple.
“I love the way you beg,” he said, ripping open her blouse and drawing her down into the shadows with him.
Chapter 6
T he ringing of her bedside phone dragged Maggie out of a nightmare in which she was endlessly chasing some nameless, faceless creature that was leading her ever deeper into a swamp where monsters lurked and no one heard her cries for help.
She started up, heart pounding, then grabbed for the phone, still only half-awake.
“You’re off the job.”
Maggie bit back a snarl. Her boss had never been known for beating around the bush. She sat up straighter in bed.
“The hell I am.”
“Bursey called this morning. The men who attacked you last night still aren’t talking, but I can’t take a chance. Your job in Fenton’s done, Manion. Pack up your things and come on home.”
“No.”
To her surprise, he didn’t swear at her. In fact, if she hadn’t still been half asleep, she would swear he sounded more concerned than angry.
Clearly, she needed coffee.
“I can’t afford to risk you, Manion. We’ve got others in the area. You have done enough.”
She slid out of bed, then grabbed the heavy terry bathrobe draped over the foot of the bed.
“I’m going to look for Tina Dornier, and I’m not quitting until we find her. Somewhere in her disappearance is the key to the whole thing. I’m sure of it.”
“Dornier’s not your problem,” her boss snapped. “Neither the sister nor the brother.”
She shrugged into the robe, wincing at the soreness in her arm. “I’ve made them my problem.
Both of them.”
Maggie shifted her hold on the phone so she didn’t catch his reply, but she could hear the irritation in his voice, even though the individual words were unintelligible.
“I’ll let you know what I find out, when I find out,” she said, then hung up before the explosion on the other end of the line could deafen her. She glanced at the alarm clock beside her bed and groaned. Not even six o’clock. The sun wasn’t up yet and already the day was going downhill.
The scent of fresh coffee and frying bacon hit her the minute she emerged.
“Oh, God! Heaven!”
And then she stopped, thunderstruck, as her still-sleepy brain awoke to the fact that Rick Dornier was standing in her kitchen clad in nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants and the water droplets that glistened in his hair and the dark curls on his chest.
Maggie blinked, trying to get her brain and her blood pressure to return to normal.
It was a lovely chest. Not the sleek, overmuscled kind that came from hours spent in a health club, but the lean, powerful kind that only an active, physical life produced.
For a man who’d gotten maybe four hours sleep in the past forty-eight, he looked disgustingly alert and cheerful.
She forced herself to breathe, but she couldn’t stop her eyes from sliding down that flat stomach with its neat little belly button and the distracting line of curls below it. The curls disappeared beneath the waistband of his sweats, which rode way too low on his hips for her comfort.
Her gaze dropped to his bare feet. Heat stabbed through her.
All these years, it had never once occurred to her that a man’s bare feet could be so incredibly sexy. Until now, she hadn’t known what she’d been missing.
“Sorry about my state of undress. I set the bacon to cooking while I showered, but it cooked a little faster than I expected.” Rick neatly flipped a couple of rashers, then cocked his head in the direction of the coffeemaker. “Coffee’s ready. I set out the sugar and a cup for you. I’d have brought you some if I’d known how you like it.”
“Sugar.” Maggie gave herself a shake, then headed for the coffeepot. “Lots of sugar.”
She ladled in four heaping spoonfuls, stirred, then leaned back against the counter and took a cautious sip.
“Ahhhh.”
She closed her eyes. Savoring the flavor, she told herself. Yet even with her eyes closed, she would swear she could see a half-naked Rick Dornier emblazoned on the backs of her eyelids.
Because she didn’t like being thrown off balance, especially not in her own kitchen so early in the morning, she forced her eyes back open.
Now that caffeine was beginning to work its magic on her system, he looked even better than he had two minutes earlier.
“Good coffee.” She lifted her cup in acknowledgment and tried not to stare.
“I’ve already had two cups,” he admitted. “I figure an
other couple along with a plateful of eggs, bacon and toast, and I just might be able to function.”
Just the thought of food before she’d had her first full dose of caffeine made Maggie shudder.
“You sleep all right?” she asked.
He shrugged. Until that moment, Maggie had never realized just how interesting the gesture could be. There were a lot of muscles involved in that slight, dismissive lift of the shoulder.
On Rick Dornier, they were really interesting muscles.
“Enough to get by for now.” He glanced at her, then deliberately focused his attention on the bacon. “Once I have some breakfast and get dressed, I’m going back to that road where we lost him. There’s probably nothing to find, but…”
Again that shrug. This time, it wasn’t distracting enough. She wasn’t quite ready to think about where Tina Dornier might be, or why she’d disappeared. Assuming she’d had any say in her disappearance at all.
Maggie flinched. She definitely didn’t want to think about that possibility.
“I’m going with you.”
Their eyes locked across the width of the kitchen.
“What’s your boss going to say about that?”
“He doesn’t approve. In fact, he threatened to pull me off the job and send me back to Washington, ASAP.”
“And what did you say in response?”
“I told him I was going to help you find your sister and that I wasn’t quitting until we did.”
He cocked his head, studying her. And then he grinned. The grin threw her almost as much as the sight of him half-naked.
“You know, I had a mule once that got that same sort of set to her jaw when she was determined to have her way.”
“A mule!”
“I have to admit, she usually got it, regardless of what I might have had to say about the matter.”
“Thanks, Dornier,” she said dryly. “There’s nothing like comparing a woman to a mule to start her day off right.”
He gave her a little salute with the spatula.
“Always glad to oblige. If it helps any, it was a darned good mule.”
She couldn’t help it—she burst out laughing. “I need more coffee.”
Rick had to admit to a sense of relief when she turned to fix a second cup.
She looked awfully good in a bathrobe. Better than good—even if it was two sizes too big for her. She looked delicious, actually.
But it was the thought of what was under that robe that really had Rick’s blood heating. If he were a betting man, he would bet that underneath all that lumpy terry cloth, she was stark naked.
The thought of Maggie naked was more than a man who was running low on sleep should have to deal with this early in the morning.
Last night, he’d been so tired he could have fallen asleep standing up and never noticed. But he’d noticed Maggie.
When this was all over and Tina was back, safe and sound—
With a soft curse, he cut that thought short.
First, they had to find Tina.
They took Rick’s pickup this time. He’d brought his locked rifle case, which he stashed under the second seat in the big crew cab, but Maggie couldn’t help noticing he hadn’t brought the overnight bag that had held his clean clothes, toothbrush and razor.
Maggie was grateful for the extra space between them on the wide bench seat in front. The sleepy, good-natured banter they’d shared in the kitchen this morning had given way to a grimmer mood, yet she was still as intensely aware of him as she’d been earlier. That troubled her. The last thing she needed right now was to get involved with Tina Dornier’s brother.
Involved? She shouldn’t even think about him. Not in that sense, anyway. But that wasn’t easy when he was still close enough for her to catch the scent of him, to hear the soft scrape of his jeans every time he shifted gears.
As distraction, she glanced at the unfamiliar array of what looked like electrical and communications gear that was mounted on the dash—tracking gear for those radio collars they put on bears, she supposed—then focused her gaze on the view out the passenger-side window. At least that way she wouldn’t be as tempted to look at him.
Rick had withdrawn into his own thoughts, as well. It wasn’t until they were well out of town that he spoke.
“Tell me,” he said almost casually. “What did Bursey mean when he said he wanted you out, that you were too emotionally involved?”
The question hit her like a blow.
She scowled at a lightning-blasted pine by the road, thinking fast.
“Relations between us—my agency—and Bursey’s people are a little…strained right now,” she said, picking her words with care. “They want to put the squeeze on the little guys, the dealers on the street. We want them left alone in the hope that, through them, we’ll get the evidence we need to grab the big guys.” That was the truth. Part of it, at least.
“Bursey doesn’t like waiting, and he doesn’t like taking orders from anyone, least of all the DEA.” She shrugged, feigning a casualness she didn’t feel. “It’s a turf thing.”
“A turf thing.”
The way he said it made it clear he didn’t believe her.
“Yeah. Cops can get awfully territorial, you know.”
His glanced at her. Just a quick glance, yet Maggie could have sworn his eyes had bored right through her.
“Bull,” he said, very calmly, and very, very firmly. “There’s more than just territorial wrangling there. Bursey wasn’t talking about the DEA staying out of it. He was talking about you, about you being too close to it, emotionally. I want to know why.”
Tension twisted in her stomach. For a moment, she considered telling him that it was none of his business. But it was his business, because it was his sister at the heart of it. If Bursey succeeded in having her pulled off the job, Rick Dornier would be on his own.
She couldn’t let that happen.
Maggie drew a deep breath, then slowly let it out.
“Five years ago, my brother, Greg, died of a heroin overdose,” she said, struggling to keep her voice controlled and uninflected. “He was using, and he was supporting his habit by dealing. I didn’t know. I was a regular cop at the time. I should have seen the signs, but I didn’t. Not until it was too late.”
Hadn’t seen? Or hadn’t wanted to see? Maggie had asked herself that a thousand times since then. She still didn’t know the answer.
She swallowed, forcing herself to continue. “Three weeks after Greg was buried, I quit the police force and joined the DEA.”
Rick glanced at her, then looked away. To her relief, he didn’t offer any familiar, worn-out words of sympathy.
“I could see where that might make Bursey think you’d take your work a little more personally than most,” he said.
That made it a little easier.
“He’s right, actually,” she admitted. “I am emotionally involved. But that just makes me better at what I do. Because I know—really know—that what I do matters. Because I know that if I’d done my job five years ago…”
Her words trailed off. She stared out the windshield, unseeing.
If she’d done her job back then—as a sister as well as a cop—Greg might still be alive.
Five years. Sometimes it seemed like yesterday, sometimes an eternity ago.
How long, she wondered, did regret for things not done endure?
“A few weeks ago,” she continued, “Bursey wanted to pull Tina in for questioning. He thinks she’s helping Jerelski and that a little pressure would make her crack, give him the kind of information that would allow us to grab Jerelski. I argued against it, said I didn’t think she was involved and that picking her up would just make Jerelski and his friends more careful, and therefore harder to catch. I won the argument. Then. But when Tina disappeared…”
“Bursey blamed you.”
Maggie nodded. “Yeah.”
Rick’s lower lip thrust out in a way she was becoming all too familiar with. �
��I could see where he wouldn’t be happy with you. But that doesn’t explain why—”
“Greg was out on bail when he died,” she said, her throat tight. “The officer who arrested him, the man who was determined to put my baby brother behind bars, was one Phillip T. Bursey of the Fenton police department.”
To Maggie’s relief, Rick didn’t press her further.
The cairn of rocks was right where he’d built it the night before. Judging from the confident speed with which he’d brought them back here, he probably hadn’t needed the marker, anyway.
He parked at the side of the road and got out. By the time she reached his side, he was squatted on his haunches, elbows on his knees, studying the dusty, rocky track in front of him.
“Wherever he is, he didn’t come back down this way,” he said. “There’s relatively fresh tire tracks heading in, nothing coming out. Doesn’t look like this road’s used much, so this is definitely our guy,” he added, pointing to a faint impression in the dirt.
Maggie frowned. She’d had enough training in forensics to know he’d been looking for the distinctive tread marks that tires left on dusty or soft surfaces, especially the kind of off-road tires the pickup probably had. Since tread patterns were designed to provide grip to a vehicle in forward motion, it was possible to tell in which direction the vehicle had been traveling when it left a mark. Had the truck come back this way, it would have left marks on top of the first set of tracks, marks that pointed toward the road, not the mountain.
Knowing what he was looking for was one thing, however. Seeing it herself was quite another. All she could decipher from the scuffed dirt was that some sort of vehicle had been over that spot. To her, the rest was dust, rock and gibberish.
Rick gracefully shoved to his feet, then dusted his palms together. “Let’s see where he went.”
He had the truck in motion before she’d managed to shut her door and fasten her seat belt.
She needed the seat belt and the built-in handhold beside the door frame to keep herself in her seat as Rick bounced and jounced up the increasingly rough, rocky trail. They passed through Ponderosa pines, then higher, into spruce and aspen. The trees closed in about them, but every once in awhile there would be a gap that permitted her to check their location against the topographic map she’d brought.