Baby Jane Doe

by Julie Miller

  That she’d put him in a situation that intensified the detachment he lived with every day ate at her conscience. If it was in her power to make his job any easier, she had to try. “Mitch—if you could help…I know you and your team worked hard to solve the Jane Doe case. But there are some problems with Donnell Gibbs’s story that just don’t add up to me.”

  “I’ll put out a call to everyone on the task force and…encourage…their cooperation.” Mitch’s promise might not be a willing one, but she knew he was good for it.

  “Thank you.”

  Mitch caught the door before Eli could shut it. “If one of my men did anything they shouldn’t have on that investigation…”

  He let the possibility hang in the air. Maybe not so unwilling, after all.

  Eli glanced at Shauna first, then back at Mitch. His loyalty was clear. “You’ll be the second to know.”

  “Fair enough.” Mitch touched a finger to his brow in salute. “Ma’am.” Then he closed the door and tapped the roof, giving Shauna the all-clear to pull out.

  Hitting the start of rush-hour traffic, Shauna cut across Main Street and zigzagged south through a less-traveled residential area toward St. Luke’s Hospital.

  “This isn’t the way to your house or my apartment,” Eli drawled.

  “I meant what I said, Eli. I want you to see a doctor about that arm. Besides the risk of infection, you nearly fainted back at Union Station. From blood loss, probably. I know it’s a blow to your ego to let those other men see you hurting, but I’m not going to allow any officer of mine to jeopardize his health just because his testosterone’s kicking in.”

  “My testosterone’s just fine, thank you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The man always had a point to make. “I’ll agree to walk into that ER and let the doctors probe and stitch to their heart’s content as long as you promise to walk in there with me and let them make sure that bump on your head isn’t something serious.”

  “My head’s just fine, thank you.”

  When the answering silence lasted from one tree-shaded block to the next, she glanced across the seat to make sure he was still with her. Eli had leaned back against the headrest and his eyes were closed. “Eli?”

  She reached across the seat to check the temp of his skin. The back of his hand was still warm. She slowed the car to take a closer look. He wasn’t resting, he was frowning. Squeezing his eyes shut and grimacing against…what? Pain? Anger?

  “Eli, talk to me.” She pulled both hands back to the wheel and stepped on the gas.

  “You’re speeding, boss lady.” But his eyes didn’t open. He didn’t smile.

  Better to keep him talking so she knew he was conscious, and she could concentrate on dodging parked cars along the narrow side streets. “That sky-blue car was the same one that ran past me in the parking garage. Did you recognize it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Once, I could dismiss as an accident. But twice? I want that driver for reckless endangerment, no matter what else I can prove against him.” They topped a hill and Shauna made the quick decision to turn onto a one-way street. “I asked Michael to run the license plate for me.”

  “Already done. I ran it last night. The owner’s name is LaTrese Pittmon. Small-time punk. He’s done jail time, probation and lots of community service. Mostly drug-related stuff.” So Eli wasn’t about to pass out, and she’d been fretting for nothing. The rat. “I didn’t get a good enough look at the driver either time to tell if he fits Pittmon’s description, though.”

  “All right, Mr. One-Step-Ahead-of-Me, what did you find out from Donnell Gibbs this morning?”

  “It’s not what he says, so much as what he doesn’t say. He tells the same story every time. Same details, same words.” She heard a gasp of sound as he breathed through clenched teeth.

  “We’re almost there,” Shauna promised. “Hang on.”

  “I think someone fed Gibbs a list of facts, then paid him or blackmailed him or just talked him into taking the fall for that little girl’s murder. Hell, Gibbs is simpleminded enough—maybe he’s actually convinced himself he did kill her.”

  “I suspected as much.” But to have someone else finally share her suspicions didn’t please her as much as she’d expected. There were still too many unanswered questions. Still too many people getting hurt.

  “Pull over.”

  The sharp command startled her. “Can you hang on? We’re almost—”

  “Pull over!”

  Shauna slammed on the brakes and swung into the first turnoff she could find. “Are you hurt?” They crunched over gravel and leaves into an alley between two backyard fences. As Eli unbuckled his seat belt, she slipped the car into Park and unhooked her own belt. “What’s wrong? This is all my fault. I never should have gotten you involved. What are you…?”

  As soon as she set the brake, Eli grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her across the seat. “I don’t want to play at this anymore.”

  His lips covered hers, muffling any protest. He crushed her to his chest, stilling any struggle. He coaxed the seam of her lips to open and thrust his tongue inside to claim hers, blotting out the thought of being anywhere else but in his arms.

  Lying at an awkward angle, sprawled across his thigh and chest, Shauna could do little with her hands besides find a fistful of shirt and hold on. But there was nothing stopping Eli from skimming his palm down her back and squeezing her bottom. Nothing to stop him from dragging that hand beneath the hem of her skirt and branding her skin with a palm-print of heat. Nothing to stop him from tunneling his fingers into her hair and angling her face this way, then that, testing how the kiss deepened with every subtle nuance of position.

  “‘Come and get me’?” He quoted her words against her mouth. “What the hell was that about?” His chest shook with the fear he must have felt as the car had hurtled toward her. Or perhaps it was anger at her for putting herself at risk. He slipped his fingers to the buttons of her jacket as he caught her bottom lip between his. “Are you trying to scare the crap out of me, boss lady?”

  “Eli, I—”

  He covered her mouth at the same time he cupped her breast through her bra and slip. Shauna moaned in helpless surrender, suspended on a coiling tightrope of desire that ran from the heady flavor of coffee on his tongue to the pearlized bud of her nipple straining into his palm to the pool of liquid fire gathering at the heart of her.

  “And then I couldn’t hold you?” He kissed a gentle reprimand, kissed an apology. “I’m not any good at playing my life by someone else’s rules.”

  He spread her jacket open and tugged it off her shoulders. The straps of her slip and bra quickly followed, catching in the crooks of her elbows and giving his roving hands access to more skin, heating every cell with every needy touch. He skimmed her neck and shoulders with callused palms, dipped his fingers beneath the lacy neckline and teased the swells of each breast with his knuckles. He reached inside with his thumbs and flicked the nipples to stringent attention. And when she whimpered her pleasure, he framed her face between both hands and kissed her hard.

  Something inside Shauna unfurled, awoke at Eli’s fierce need. The brittle shell of self-preserving protocol shattered and freed her to respond to the potent stamp of his kiss. This was an affirmation of life, an outlet for emotions too intense to keep locked up inside. And Shauna wanted more.

  She bent one knee up on the seat, giving herself the leverage to free her arms and wind them around Eli’s neck. She rubbed her aching breasts against him as she pulled herself up to become an equal partner in this embrace. With a satisfied moan deep in his chest, Eli adjusted his position so that there was more tangling of legs, more friction between angles and curves, more room for lips to taste a salty neck or nibble an ear.

  A lot of years had gone by since passion had last consumed her, and Shauna had forgotten the tactile thrill of tracing where warm skin met short hair. Of burying her fingers in the sexy muss of silky spikes. She�
�d forgotten the contrast of firm lips and prickly beard stubble against her cheek. The remarkable differences between a man’s hard need and a woman’s softer welcome.

  She’d forgotten a few things, yes. But she’d never known this crazy, raging heat that consumed her from the inside out. This need to connect physically, mentally and emotionally with a man.

  With Austin, she’d quickly learned to hold back, so that when he disappeared on a gambling binge for a few days, or plunged her into some new crisis of lost money and dangerous company, she wouldn’t hurt as much. She wouldn’t feel betrayed. She could survive as long as she stayed in control. She could protect herself and her children if she didn’t want anything—or anyone—too much.

  But with Eli Masterson, nothing had been predictable or controlled. And as doggedly as he protected her, she wasn’t really…safe.

  Shauna’s fingers froze against Eli’s scalp. She buried her face against his shoulder, breathing in the scents of musky skin and sterile antiseptic. It was no good. She needed some fresh air if she wanted to avoid how being this close to Eli scattered her thoughts and clouded the truth. This was not a relationship. Groping each other in the car, sticking their tongues down each other’s throats, was purely lust, right? A physical reaction to stress, not a heart-to-heart testimony to anything deep or lasting or real.

  She couldn’t throw away a career or a life by allowing either one of them to forget that.

  Misreading her subtle withdrawal as the chill of the evening air or the remembrance of fear, Eli altered his hold. He moved his hands to the relatively neutral territory of her back and rubbed slow, warming circles there as he tugged her clothes back into place.

  “That man tried to kill you today.” Eli’s voice sounded raw against the crown of her hair and Shauna shivered with the need to erase the pain she heard. But she couldn’t. “I had to stand aside and pretend that you getting hurt didn’t matter to me.”

  “Eli…I don’t matter.” Taking care to avoid his injured arm, Shauna pushed herself up onto the seat beside him. She needed to see into those dark gold eyes and make him understand the truth they had to accept. “I can’t matter.”

  “Bull—”

  “We had a job to do today, Eli. I couldn’t let Yours Truly hurt those people. And you wouldn’t let him hurt me. I thank you for that.” She brushed her fingers across the back of his hand where it rested on her thigh. Then she gently moved his hand to his own thigh and scooted back behind the steering wheel. “No matter what you claim, you’d make a great partner. I can always sense when you’re around, looking out for me.”

  “A partner?” The ice in his tone was unmistakable.

  “I’m not offering you a job. The commissioner works alone.” She tried to make a joke, but she fumbled with the buttons of her jacket as she redressed herself, giving away the unsteady state of her nerves. Finally, she gave up and clutched the wheel until the worst of the crazy need still sparking through her system had abated. “I hate it that you got hurt, too. I hate that some outside force has power over our lives like that.”

  She turned on the seat to face him, fighting to ignore the heartbreaking reminder of his bravery staining the long white bandage on his arm. “But maybe if you hadn’t been so focused on me, maybe if I hadn’t been so distracted by Rebecca Page’s questions, we would have seen that maniac sooner. Instead of scaring forty-seven children half to death and ripping your arm to shreds, we could have stopped him. Maybe we could have arrested LaTrese Pittmon or whoever was driving that car, and we’d be on our way to finding out exactly who Yours Truly is.”

  “If I hadn’t been focused on you, you’d be dead.”

  The cold harsh fact hung in the air between them.

  Shauna stared through the windshield, searching the long alleyway for a rational argument that wouldn’t come.

  Her lips felt bruised and feverish—thoroughly ravished in a way her ex-husband had had neither the time nor the inclination to do. Shauna closed her eyes and touched them, reliving for a moment the passion she’d felt in Eli’s arms. “This is crazy. It goes against everything I’ve been taught for twenty-five years at this job. Everything that ten years of a doomed marriage taught me.”

  She looked over and saw that Mr. Cool was dealing with the aftershocks of that torrid kiss as well. His chest rose and fell in deep, steadying breaths, and he adjusted his position on the seat to ease the strain on his anatomy.

  “We have to focus on the investigation, Eli.” Shauna released the brake but didn’t shift the car into gear. “Or we won’t be able to get the job done. I won’t be able to do my job with you…in my space all the time. I need you to help me keep some distance between us.”

  “I’m that irresistible, huh?”

  Thank God he could still find some humor in this. Maybe they could just go back to trading barbs instead of those dangerous kisses. “You’re a pain in the butt is what you are.”

  “My sisters say I have a terrible big-brother complex, always trying to rush in and fix things—trying to keep them safe. It’s my responsibility. I’m the closest thing to a parent they have.”

  “They’re lucky to have you.”

  He laughed. “Not really. I’m lousy at it. That’s why one’s in rehab, making terrible choices in men, and the other’s a workaholic with no men at all in her life. We’re quite the happy family.”

  Shauna didn’t see anything funny in the guilty weight he carried on his shoulders. “I’m sorry to hear about your sister. I know how loving someone with an addiction can throw your whole life off-kilter. The addiction affects every family decision, every personal choice you make.” He nodded his agreement. Sad as it was, maybe this was the common ground where she could finally get him to understand her need for order and distance between them. “Is that what makes you so protective of me? It’s ironic for a man ten years younger than me to act like my big brother.”

  Eli turned and looked at her so hard that Shauna felt herself backing toward her side of the car. But she didn’t get far. Eli palmed the back of her neck, leaned across the seat and kissed her hard and fast, with the same intensity that darkened his eyes when he pulled away.

  “Trust me. These are not brotherly urges I’m having toward you.” He sat back, trying to be good for her sake, she supposed. Or maybe trying to make her want what she shouldn’t all the more. “Now drive, before I bleed through the upholstery.”

  Shauna buckled up and looked over her shoulder to back out of the alley. “Or someone sees us.”

  “Yeah. That, too.”

  “MY GOD, Shauna. I just heard.” Michael Garner entered St. Luke’s emergency room waiting area and strode across the lobby as if she was the one getting half her arm stitched up. “Are you all right?”

  Shauna tossed aside the magazine she hadn’t been reading and stood to greet him. But he swallowed her up in a hug before she could get a word out. He held her a fraction too close, held her a moment too long.

  “Michael.” When she gave him a gentle nudge, he hugged her harder. Good grief! When would the man get a clue? The lunkhead rocked her back and forth, though she wasn’t sure which of them he was trying to comfort. “Michael.”

  With a firmer push, he finally stepped back. But he cupped his hands at her elbows to maintain contact. “I had to hear about the incident at Union Station on the evening news. Why didn’t you call me?”

  Actually, she was surprised he hadn’t heard about it through the police grapevine any sooner. But he wore a genuine frown and Shauna regretted her harsh thoughts. She patted his lapel, offering reassurance as well as apology as she pushed him even farther away. “Half the precinct turned out once they heard there were children involved in the drive-by. I swear we even had a couple of off-duty officers show up. Believe me, we didn’t need any more chiefs trying to help.”

  Michael pulled her into a seat beside him. “I meant, why didn’t you tell me that Yours Truly bastard tried to run you down?”

  “What?” She hadn�
��t leaked a word about the previous threats to Rebecca Page.

  No one besides her and Eli knew that those threats had become explicitly personal.

  “I’ve been at this job longer than you have, Shauna. I can put two and two together.” He took off his suit coat and draped it around her shoulders, wrapping her up in his unwanted personal protection. “Yours Truly was becoming bolder with each message he wrote to KCPD. First, it was just a complaint, like a lot of other people. Then he threatened to sue the department. When he began accusing your task force of incompetence, I knew it was just a matter of time before he targeted someone specifically. It’s you, isn’t it, Shauna? He tried to kill you today.”

  Michael’s friendly concern had just taken a left turn toward creepy. She shrugged off his coat and stood. “How much do you know about Yours Truly?”

  He rose and tried to cover her frayed jacket and low-cut décolletage again. “You showed me his messages to the department. We decided not to give this guy any of the publicity he wanted, so we buried them in the files. But a threat against KCPD is a threat against all of us. Maybe it’s time to go public about this lunatic. Put everyone on alert so he can’t be a danger to any of us. Especially you.”

  So he didn’t know about the personal threats. He’d just made a calculated deduction. Shauna breathed a little easier, but not much. This time she carefully folded his jacket and handed it back to him. “Listen, Michael. We don’t know that what happened today has anything to do with the Yours Truly complaints. Maybe the driver was some kook off his meds. Someone under the influence.” The lies flowed smoothly off her tongue. “Maybe he was just a really bad driver.”

  “And it’s just coincidence that you were the one he nearly killed?”

  “There were dozens of people in that loading zone and parking lot. Any one of them could have been the target—if there was a single target.”

  “Don’t dismiss my concerns, Shauna. You’re too important to this department.” Oh, God, he was going to touch her again. “You’re too important to me.”