This was not Valri’s first rodeo—nor was it her first sweet-talking relative. Growing up with her brothers had made her all but immune to this sort of charismatic persuasion. “What you need, Detective O’Bannon,” she informed him, “is help.”
Chris was all innocence as he replied, “That’s what I’m asking for.”
Valri wouldn’t budge. “Really serious help.”
“Still on the same page,” Chris told her.
“Serious mental help, Christian,” she emphasized, feeling as if she still wasn’t getting through to him.
“Haven’t had your morning tea yet, have you?” Chris asked sympathetically. He knew that his cousin was partial to tea, unlike the rest of his clan, who all but ran on black coffee.
“Haven’t had my breakfast yet,” Valri complained in a weak moment. “I came in early to try to catch up on my backlog.”
And that was clearly not happening, she thought, looking accusingly at the sealed cell phones on her desk. It was just a matter of time before she gave in and she knew it.
“Well, if you do this—” he nodded at the evidence bags “—it’ll be that much less backlog you’ll have to deal with.”
Valri blew out a breath. She’d made a valiant attempt, but now had to give up. The less time she spent resisting, the more she would have for the rest of her work.
“All right, I’ll do it,” she declared. “It’ll be worth it just to get you out of my hair.”
Chris sifted a long, silky blond strand through his fingers. “And such lovely hair it is, too.”
Valri pulled the strand away from him. “You can cut the blarney, Chris. I already agreed to process the cell phones.”
He pretended to look stunned. “Valri, I’m surprised at you. We don’t avail ourselves of ‘blarney.’ That’s for the Irish. Our ancestors came from Scotland.”
Valri sighed. The man had a wonderful baritone voice that made the most trivial information sound important. But even so, it was time to get him out of her lab.
“You know, the longer you talk,” she told him, “the longer it’s going to take for me to go through all this.”
“Consider me gone,” Chris announced, already heading for the door. “Oh, and don’t forget to make copies of those party videos,” he reminded her. “Uncle Sean’s going to want to take a look at them himself. You know how hands-on he is.”
“As opposed to being all handsy,” Valri countered, looking at her cousin knowingly.
Rather than pretend not to understand what she was talking about, Chris grinned. “We all have our calling,” he said, and then winked. “But between you and me, my hands never go anywhere they’re not invited.”
“Just go!” Valri ordered, pointing to the doorway with a laugh.
“Like I was never here,” he replied and made himself scarce.
*
“Miss me?” Chris asked late that afternoon, stepping into Suzie’s work area.
Lost in thought as she’d been, she stifled a gasp. The detective had caught her by surprise and it took an effort not to show it. Suzie didn’t like revealing any sort of vulnerability, and to be caught off guard or unprepared was to be vulnerable, in her book.
Collecting herself, she answered with a careless, “Not even for a second.” Then suggested, “Try being gone longer.”
“Maybe next time,” he promised.
Although she wanted to ignore him, she couldn’t. It wasn’t just that his presence seemed to fill up the room, even one as large as the lab. He’d brought something with him, as well.
“What’s that?” she asked, nodding at the tablet he had just dropped on her desk.
“That is your very own copy of Aurora’s wild nightlife,” he told her.
“I thought I was already looking at it,” Suzie deadpanned.
Chris inclined his head. “Touché,” he replied, then, playing along, said, “This is the video version. Or more specifically, a copy of what our very own wizard of a computer technician managed to get off the Three Stooges Minus One’s cell phone videos of the so-called ‘floating’ party that they couldn’t crash—thanks to you,” he added, because, after all, if Suzie hadn’t asked the right questions and found out about the videos the teenagers had made, they wouldn’t have this potential lead.
“Nice save,” Suzie allowed, amused despite herself. “But you don’t have to worry about hurting my feelings if you don’t mention my part in securing the videos. I’m not in this for the credit.”
Chris leaned casually against her desk, every inch the consummate laid-back detective. “What are you in this for?” he asked.
She could feel his eyes pinning her down even if she deliberately didn’t look up and make eye contact. “A regular paycheck at the end of the week,” she told him dismissively.
“Uh-uh,” Chris said.
He leaned down in front of her, getting in her face and making it impossible for her to avoid eye contact with him. His gaze felt as if it could delve right into her soul and she really resented the invasion.
“That isn’t it, either,” he told her confidently.
“Then what is?” she asked, doing her best not to allow her temper to flare.
Suzie braced herself to listen to the detective spin his outlandish theories. At the very least, she expected to hear him spout some grandiose rhetoric. But it was her turn to be surprised by him.
“I don’t know yet,” Chris told her honestly. “But I’m working on it. I’ll let you know when I come up with an answer.”
Suzie frowned. She didn’t have time to waste watching this too-handsome-for-his-own-good detective trying to mesmerize her. She had work to do and so did he.
“Your time would be better spent coming up with answers regarding our dead woman,” she said in a no-nonsense tone.
Our.
Her slip of the tongue was not lost on Chris. The grin on his lips told her so before he uttered a word. “Our first joint venture. We should savor this.”
“What I’d savor,” she informed him, “is some peace and quiet so I can work. Specifically, some time away from you.”
The expression that came over Chris’s face was one of doubt. “Now, if we spend time apart, how are we going to work on this case together?” he asked, conveying that what she’d just said lacked logic.
Suzie had only one word to give him in response to his question. “Productively.”
With that, she went back to doing her work, but that lasted for only a few moments. A minute at best. Though she tried to block out his presence, he still managed to get to her.
He was standing exactly where he had been, watching her so intently that she could literally feel his eyes on her skin. It caused her powers of concentration to deteriorate until they finally became nonexistent.
Unable to stand it, she looked up and glared at him. “What do you want, O’Bannon?” she muttered. It took everything she had not to shout the question at him. The man was making her crazy.
Chris never hesitated as he answered her. “Dinner.”
She clenched her jaw. “You can buy it in any supermarket,” she informed him coldly.
He sidestepped the roadblocks she was throwing up as if they weren’t there.
“With you.”
This time Suzie was the one who didn’t hesitate for a second. “Not at any price. Now please go before I take out my manual on workplace harassment and start underlining passages to get you banned from my lab.”
“It’s the crime scene lab, not yours,” he reminded her pleasantly, taking a page out of her book. And then Chris inclined his head. “Until the next time.”
“There is no next time,” she countered, steaming even though she refused to look up again.
“Don’t forget we’re working this case together,” he told her cheerfully.
He thought he heard Suzie say “Damn” under her breath as he left the lab.
Chris smiled to himself.
Chapter 4
Suzie counted to a
hundred.
Slowly.
She’d already gotten the impression that O’Bannon was the impatient type, so if he was planning on doubling back to make a reappearance in her lab, she was fairly certain he’d do it way before she reached a hundred.
Just to be sure, she counted to a hundred a second time.
Finished, she relaxed and turned her attention to the tablet the detective had deposited almost carelessly on her desk—as if he didn’t know that her interest would immediately be drawn to it. She mentally crossed her fingers that the two fumbling teens had somehow managed to capture something of significance on their phones, and that it wasn’t all just blurred videos.
Heaven knew she wasn’t getting anywhere with the photos she’d taken at what now amounted to the secondary crime scene, Suzie thought. If the woman’s killer had dumped her body there—and Suzie was certain that whoever it was had—she had no hope of singling out his or her shoe prints from all the other prints that were so pervasive around the body.
She hadn’t found any traces of blood in the area, either. None belonging to the victim and none that might have pointed to her would-be killer. In addition, Suzie hadn’t seen anything beneath the young woman’s nails to indicate that she had tried to fight off her killer.
What she did find, however, was a great deal of spilled alcohol, all varieties, on the floor, as well as traces of drugs that at first assessment appeared to be of the recreational variety.
She found it rather ironic that she was dealing with that sort of party scene now. She herself had almost gone that route when the scandal had broken wide open. Only her fierce resolve to hold herself together for her mother’s sake had kept her from doing it. Kept her from availing herself of the alcohol and drugs that would have numbed her acute pain, as well as her acute shame, and brought her peace, at least for a little while.
And then, after the trial was over, her mother had killed herself, abruptly bringing what was left of Suzie’s own shattered world crashing down on her.
She paused for a moment, drawing in a long breath as she struggled to center herself and put the barriers back up where they belonged. She needed to contain those memories, to keep them as far away from her mind as she possibly could.
Though she hated admitting to weakness, she knew that she couldn’t handle those memories yet.
Maybe she never would.
Squaring her shoulders, she pulled the tablet closer and activated the video. She had clues to find and a murder to make sense of. She owed it to the dead girl.
She owed it to a lot of dead girls.
*
It felt like she’d been staring at the videos, playing them over and over again, for hours now. Each time she did, she picked up something new she hadn’t seen before.
But now her eyes felt as if they were burning.
Leaning back in her chair for a moment, Suzie closed them.
When she opened her eyes again, only the extreme control that she had learned to exercise kept her from screaming. Even so, her heart pounded like a war drum.
When she’d shut her eyes to momentarily rest them, she’d been alone in the lab. When she opened them, she found she wasn’t alone any longer.
Chris was standing right in front of her, less than two feet away.
Damn O’Bannon, he would wind up giving her a heart attack.
“Why are you sneaking up on me?” she demanded, unconsciously pressing her hand against her chest, as if to keep her heart from leaping out.
“I wasn’t sneaking,” Chris told her innocently. “Although I did leave my tap shoes at home. The chief of d’s frowns on scuff marks the taps make on the wood,” he explained, keeping an entirely straight face.
She didn’t have the patience to listen to him go on and on. Her composure had faded hours ago.
“It’s late, O’Bannon. What are you doing here?” she asked.
Rather than becoming defensive, he turned the tables on her, saying mildly, “I could ask you the same thing.”
She didn’t care for the nature of his question, or his attitude. She hadn’t invaded his work space; he had invaded hers.
And she wanted him gone.
“I have work to do. I like working late,” she emphasized. “There’s usually no one around to bother me,” she added, looking at him pointedly. Her message was clear.
Or so she thought.
Chris nodded. “I had a hunch,” he told her. “That’s why I came back.”
Give the situation, he wasn’t making any sense. But then, she was beginning to think that he was doing that on purpose. Well, whatever his game was, she didn’t have the time or the desire to play. She wanted him gone.
Now.
“Unless you have some new information for me—” Suzie began, but she never got the opportunity to finish.
“No, no new information,” Chris confessed, making no move to leave.
“Well then—”
Again he didn’t give her a chance to finish. “I do, however, have this.”
She still had no idea what he was talking about—or why the man just couldn’t take a hint, even if she was hitting him over the head with it.
“‘This?’” she questioned.
She looked on in surprise as he hefted a large paper bag from the floor and placed it on her desk—obviously one he’d brought in when she had her eyes closed. Chris began to unpack its contents.
Within seconds, he’d taken out five steaming white containers, each embossed with red Chinese characters on the sides.
“You know the old saying, if the mountain won’t come to Moh—”
“I am neither the mountain nor the person in your imaginary drama,” Suzie pointed out sharply.
Chris rolled with the punches. “Okay, then let’s just call it a mercy dinner.” Since she didn’t instantly protest, he continued. “You haven’t moved from that spot since I dropped off the videos. You’ve got to be starving by now.”
Suzie’s mouth dropped open, but she recovered quickly. “You’re spying on me?” she cried, not knowing if she should be creeped out or just angry. Who did this man think he was to take over this way? To keep tabs on her every movement?
“No,” he stated. “What I did was have a casual conversation with my uncle.” Before she could take him to task any further, he added, “I called him to let him know I’d gotten the cell phone videos copied and that I’d dropped them off with you. That’s when he mentioned your habit of burning the midnight oil and that you’d probably be doing the same thing with this. He expressed concern that you had a habit of forgetting to eat.”
Chris glanced at her pointedly as he flattened the now empty bag, setting it off to one side. He had put out the boxes, as well as the chopsticks and napkins that had come with the order. He also laid out the two sets of plastic cutlery he had specifically requested. He had no idea if Suzie knew how to use chopsticks, and he’d come prepared.
“If you recall, I did mention dinner today,” he reminded her.
“And if you recall, I mentioned the word no,” she countered with a defiant note.
Chris shrugged, unfazed. He dragged over a chair from another workstation.
“I just figured that was before you got hungry.” He noticed that she still wasn’t making a move to open any of the containers. “It’s here. You might as well have some,” he coaxed, opening a container close to him. She still made no move toward the food. “Were you always this stubborn?” he asked. “Or is it just me who sets you off?”
Suzie sighed. She supposed he was right. The food was here and it wasn’t as if she was making some sort of a commitment if she actually ate some of it.
Erasing the unfriendly expression from her face, she peeled back the paper wrapping from a set of chopsticks, separated the two pieces and deftly clasped them in her fingers. “Thank you,” she murmured almost grudgingly.
Glancing up at her, Chris stopped eating for a moment, saying, “I’m impressed.”
Despite her
best efforts, Suzie could feel her back going up. “Because I thanked you?” she asked, ready to tell him to take his butt off the stool and make himself scarce.
“No,” he replied easily, defusing her instant reaction, “because you can use chopsticks. I’m not any good at it.”
She would be the last to flatter him—nor did he need to have his ego bolstered—but what he was saying was absurd.
“It’s not like playing a cello,” she told him. “You just take the two pieces like so...” She demonstrated. “Then you pick up the food and bring it to your mouth, like so.” She proceeded to go through the motions, slowly and elaborately.
When she was finished, Chris attempted to mimic her actions. But he wound up failing miserably, actually sending one chopstick flying.
Unable to help herself, Suzie started to laugh at what was at best a very sad display of artlessness and ineptitude.
Rather than take offense, he appeared pleased. “So you actually can laugh,” he observed.
She had to say it. “At particularly hapless displays of ineptitude? Yes,” she allowed. “I can.”
“Well,” he said philosophically, “I’m always happy to please a lovely lady.”
The laughter faded and Suzie became serious again. “Don’t do that,” she told him.
“Don’t do what? Call you lovely?” Chris asked innocently.
That went without saying. She didn’t like hearing empty words of flattery, but she knew it was also pointless to tell him that. He wouldn’t listen.
“No, don’t keep trying to hit on me.” Suzie paused to consider her words. He wasn’t going to listen to that, either. “Although I guess that’s kind of like telling you not to breathe.”
Chris just smiled warmly at her. Was he humoring her or agreeing with her? She couldn’t tell.
“We can consider the possibilities while we eat,” he told her, the same warm, inviting smile on his lips.
Suzie shook her head in disbelief. She had to laugh again. When he looked at her, an unspoken question in his eyes, she explained, “You’re like that blow-up clown doll, aren’t you? The one that no matter how many times you punch it just bounces back up again—right in your face.”
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