by Julie Miller
A cute little cat with a vent hole in the bottom.
Holding the statue to the light seeping in through the bedroom blinds, Laura inspected the hole. There was something stuffed inside the hollow figure. Hopefully, not another cryptic message, although it did look like a wadded-up piece of paper.
I’m not in the mood for a treasure hunt, Chloe. The hole was just wide enough for Laura to stick her finger inside and work the paper down through the opening. When something inside the paper got stuck, she briefly considered breaking the cat open to retrieve it, but that felt too much like what the killer—who’d tossed this place without any respect for the woman who had owned and cherished these things—would’ve done.
Instead, Laura tugged on the paper, tearing it bit by bit until only the thing that had been wrapped in it remained inside. Then it was a matter of tilting and jiggling before a tiny black-and-silver flash drive fell into the palm of her hand.
Laura frowned. She’d half expected the heirloom ring Vinnie had been looking for to tumble out. Maybe Conor was right—that story had just been a ruse to get back inside the apartment to find this.
Whatever this was. The thing that Chloe might have been murdered for. Her insurance.
Laura wasn’t going to psychically discover what was on the flash drive by holding it in her hand. She needed a computer. When she started to pick up the shreds of paper she’d created, she realized there was another message written on it in black ink. Was this what Chloe had originally planned to send to her, creating the lumpy envelope Isaac had described? What had happened between arguing with Isaac and feeling the need to hide the flash drive? Who had happened?
Sparing a few minutes before sneaking out again, Laura stuffed the flash drive into the pocket of her jeans and laid the torn bits of paper on top of the bed, piecing them together like a puzzle until its hidden message revealed itself.
Marry me. Or I’ll share this with Mommy.
I don’t want to. You know how much I love you. I’ve got your back on this. But it’s time for you to man up and pop the question.
Or I’m sending it to her.
C
Chloe was blackmailing somebody. Not Isaac if his story about her dumping him for good the day of the wedding was to be believed.
Vinnie Orlando.
Had Vinnie killed the woman he’d promised to marry?
Who’s Mommy? Chloe had always called Verna by her first name when she spoke of her mother—like they were sisters instead of parent and daughter. She’d said Mommy during that last phone call, too. Not Verna. This was someone else.
I need to get this to Conor. Despite the logic that reminded her she should turn this evidence over to Deputy Cobb, her only thought was to clean up every trace of her being here and get down to her apartment to meet Conor and show him what she’d found. She scooped up the shreds of paper and stuffed them into her pocket before wiping off the cat figurine with the cuffs of her sweatshirt and carefully setting it back in the exact same place on the nightstand, in case the police should come back for another look.
Her phone beeped with a text notification, and she quickly pulled it from her back pocket. Conor must have made great time driving to the outskirts of the city. If he was already at her door, wondering why she wasn’t answering his knock, she’d have some awkward explaining to do.
Unable to spend another second in the room where her friend had died, Laura slipped into the hallway and pulled up the message. She’d just be vague and tell him she was on her way, and maybe he wouldn’t question how she’d found the flash drive or lecture her about taking risks.
It wasn’t Conor.
The entire apartment swirled around her as panic flared inside. But the text on her screen remained crystal clear.
Missing your dead friend, Laura? Find anything?
“How do you know...?” Tearing her focus from the taunting threat, she swept her gaze across the apartment. “Where are you?” Was someone here with her? She hadn’t smelled anything out of the ordinary, not even the rotting meat odor she’d half expected to find with all that dried blood. She hadn’t heard anything but her own breathing. She hadn’t seen...
Her gaze landed on the living room window.
Had those curtains been open the whole time? It had been night when she’d been in here before. But now she could see the snow piling up on the brick sill outside and curling around the corner of the window frame. The blinds were up, the curtains pulled back. Her head swiveled to the front door, then back again. Just like in her apartment, the window was positioned on the far side of the living room, right across from the front door. Could someone have seen her come in? Maybe the spy was out in the hallway.
Conor had warned that she needed to be aware of her surroundings at all times. And she’d just failed big-time.
She wasn’t sure if it was morbid curiosity or a stab at survival, but Laura steeled her nerves and forced herself to walk to the window. Keeping as close to the edge of the frame as she could, she peeked outside. She studied the sooty, snow-dusted street below. Had Deputy Cobb returned? There was no official car down there, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t sitting in an unmarked vehicle. Although most of the residents in the area had driven into the city for work or school for the day, there were still a few cars parked along the sidewalk on either side of the street. Anyone in one of those vehicles could see into the front-facing window, but could they see all the way to the door from that angle? She lifted her gaze to the medical offices and business windows of the buildings across the street. If she could see into their waiting rooms and conference areas, then certainly anyone there could see into Chloe’s apartment. They could see into her apartment on the floor below, as well. Plus, the parking garage on the corner offered layer after layer of shadows between each level of concrete. So many hidden areas. So many windows.
Who...?
Her phone beeped with another text.
Green is a lovely color on you.
Laura slowly dropped her focus down to the green-and-gold George Mason University sweatshirt she wore. Oh, hell.
Her lungs constricted with a painful breath. Her pulse thundered in her ears.
He could see her. Right now. Right here. He was watching.
Imaginary laughter rang in her ears as she bolted for the front door. She fumbled with the lock a moment before stuffing her phone into her back pocket to wipe any prints off the knob. Then she was ducking beneath the yellow tape and pulling the door shut. She stabbed her key into the deadbolt to secure it.
“Taking up a life of crime now, are we?”
She yelped and whirled around to see Conor leaning against the wall across from Chloe’s door, his arms folded over the front of his unbuttoned coat.
The cold outside air radiated off him. Or maybe she was going into shock. “How did you know where I was?”
“Um, I’m a detective? And I happen to know you pretty darn well...” She didn’t need an explanation or a joke or a reprimand. She needed warmth and strength and an anchor she could hold on to. Without a word or even a conscious breath, she tugged Conor’s arms apart, slipped her hands inside the front of his coat and walked straight into his chest. His arms folded around her when she turned her cheek to the steady thump of his heart. “Whoa. My God, you’re shaking.” His hold on her tightened, pulling her onto her toes. His hand cupped the nape of her neck, his lips brushing the crown of her hair. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
Laura needed a few seconds of his clean, cold scent filling her head, a few seconds of his hard body surrounding hers, a few seconds of the innate caring Conor had always given her, before she could ease the grip she had around his waist and lean back against the cradle of his arms. His blue eyes were so dark, so worried.
“He’s watching me. He knew I was in Chloe’s apartment.” She reached into her back pocket without breaking the contact between them.
She’d surely lose it if he ever let her go. She pulled up the texts and handed him the phone, sliding back into the heat beneath his coat, clinging to him with all the strength she had left. “He’s watching.”
Chapter Eight
The first thing Conor did after securing the dead bolt to Laura’s apartment was cross to the living room window and close the blinds. If the killer was spying on her, he intended to make the bastard’s efforts to get eyes on Laura as difficult as possible.
The second thing he did was to take her hand and fold it squarely into his palm. She needed the contact to stay calm, feel reassured. And quite frankly, so did he. Together they moved through her apartment, checking locks, closing blinds. The dimness cast a pall over her apartment where the brightness of the winter afternoon had once lit it with the sunlight and color he associated with Laura. Although he regretted casting her life into the shadows, he preferred the seclusion to knowing that the spying creep who’d been calling and texting had any kind of advantage over her.
The third thing he did was shuck out of his coat and sit on her sofa. He adjusted the gun on his hip and pulled Laura down beside him, wrapping her up in his arms when she curled into a ball, tucking her head against his shoulder.
She’d stopped shaking. She didn’t cry. She didn’t talk. But something about the way her fingers fisted in his sweater and T-shirt, pressing into the skin and muscle underneath, and the way her short legs curled over his lap as if she needed every inch of human contact he could offer, tore at him inside.
Conor had been in protector mode before, knowing Laura was poking her nose into things that were better left to law enforcement to investigate.
But now, after he’d read those damned texts and felt the fear vibrating through her body, adrenaline pumped in him, putting him in amped-up super-protective mode. It was like he was back working WITSEC again, on that last protection assignment he’d run in Kansas City. That was two years ago, when his idiot boss had agreed to leak information about his witness in order to use her as bait to make the Badge Man, the serial killer who’d murdered her husband and tried to kill her, reveal himself so he could be captured. His job was to keep people safe from those who wanted them dead. Period. That had been the final straw that had convinced Conor to leave the Marshals Service and go to work at KCPD. Because it was his friends at KCPD who had stepped up to help him keep his witness safe when the killer had shown up to silence the only surviving eyewitness to a serial killer’s crimes.
But he wasn’t in Kansas City now. He had neither WITSEC resources he could call on, nor a local police force he trusted to back him up with Laura’s safety.
And damn if it didn’t infuriate every cell in his body to know some wacko out there who’d already murdered her friend was getting his jollies by taunting Laura with threats and making this smart, funny, full-of-life woman afraid. It wasn’t just anger simmering in his veins, either. There was a far too familiar ache squeezing at his chest—that ache of knowing he could lose someone who was growing more precious, more necessary to his sanity and emotional well-being with every passing second. He’d already lost so much—he wasn’t sure he had the strength to lose anyone else who mattered to him.
So, he damn well wasn’t going to let anybody hurt Laura.
He held her for as long as he could before the need to act grew too great, and he had to do something.
When he felt her finally relax against him, Conor tunneled his fingers into the silky waves at the nape of her neck. He started a slow massage, apologizing for the tension he was about to rekindle there. “Tell me what you found in Chloe’s apartment,” he whispered at the top of her head. “Because I’m guessing you figured something out and went to check it out all by yourself—and this guy knows, or at least suspects, you found whatever it is he’s looking for.”
She nodded, then reached into her pocket and pressed a flash drive stick into his palm. “I decoded Chloe’s message about the cat.” She pointed to the silly red dog on her desk. “She made each of us a statue when she was first experimenting with her animal sculptures. She made me a dog, and herself a blue cat.”
“This was inside?”
She nodded, pulling her legs off his lap and drawing a handful of confetti from her pocket. She leaned forward, arranging the strips of paper on the coffee table in front of them. Conor frowned at what he could only label a blackmail note. “This was wrapped around the flash drive. I think these were what she was originally going to send me for safekeeping.”
“Until someone showed up unexpectedly, and she knew she had to get rid of it. The cat was her plan B.” Conor cursed at whatever horrible thing was on this flash drive. “Why would she get you involved with something like this?”
The Laura he knew was back in her eyes when she turned to face him. “Because she didn’t have anybody else.”
Conor brushed aside the caramel lock that had fallen across her forehead and studied the compassion in her green-gold eyes. “Is it your mission in life to be there for every lost soul who crosses your path?”
She pressed her cheek into his lingering hand. “Only the ones I...really care about.”
The caring didn’t surprise him, but he sensed that she’d been about to say something different. Something specific to him. He knew the feelings between them were changing, intensifying, getting complicated. Was she as reluctant to put a name to those feelings as he was? Did she need the reliability of their relationship to sustain her the way he seemed to need her?
He didn’t ask her to elaborate, and he didn’t try to explain the complexity of his feelings, either. Instead, she gathered up the shredded note and flash drive and carried them both to her desk. Conor rose and followed her while she booted up her computer.
He sat on the ottoman beside the desk while she took the chair. “Did you receive the package Chloe mailed to you today?”
Laura nodded, still looking a little pale for his liking, but she seemed to be functioning again. She pulled an envelope from the top right drawer and dropped the pieces of paper inside it. “Deputy Cobb was here. He took the letter after I read it. That’s all it was. A padded envelope with a letter. But I think initially Chloe had the flash drive in the package. It had been cut open and resealed. Part of the original letter had been crossed out, and she scribbled another message about watching her cat instead. That’s when I put two and two together and found this.” She nodded to the flash drive on the desk in front of her. “Are you going to turn me in?”
“Are we going to see what’s on it?” He reached over to squeeze her hand. When she smiled, something inside him lightened up, too. He picked up the flash drive himself and inserted it into the side of the computer. “Let’s see what you found, Nancy Drew.”
The icon that popped up was labeled Vinnie and Me. Not incriminating in and of itself, but it certainly gave Conor an indication of what to expect when Laura clicked on the icon and the list of files appeared. They were all video and photo files, probably transferred from Chloe’s phone, with innocuous names like Birthday Dinner, First Date, Richmond Art Show, Studio Session 1, 2, and so on, chronicling her relationship with Vinnie Orlando.
Laura clicked on a couple of the files to discover selfies at restaurants and in front of Washington, DC, landmarks. A few were videos with Chloe’s high-pitched voice providing commentary of Vinnie practicing his golf swing at an indoor driving range, or getting the pants beat off him in pool at a local tavern. In that one, Vinnie talked loudly and staggered around the table as if he was drunk, or possibly high. The studio sessions were recordings of works in progress, or snapshots of drawings she wanted to recreate in clay. Studio Session 5 was apparently Chloe posing nude for Vinnie. She’d filmed him shirtless beside a canvas, painting her while they flirted back and forth. But when she called him over for a selfie together, Laura quickly clicked off the file. “We don’t need to look at that, do we?”
She scrolled
back up the page where a file name caught Conor’s eye. Ring Shopping. Curious to follow his hunch, he tapped on the screen. “That one.”
He frowned when Laura opened the video and widened it to full screen. That was no mall or jewelry store with bright lights reflecting off display cases full of precious gems and shiny metals. The picture was blurry and dark. He thought he could make out the sounds of breathless panting and a rapid tapping.
“Those are probably Chloe’s heels,” Laura explained. “I think she’s running.”
He caught an image of what looked like a wall of bricks before he heard the slam of several car doors. “Surprise, baby. Mama’s early for our naughty date.”
“Is that Chloe?” Conor asked, clarifying the source of the woman’s voice.
Laura nodded. She tucked her short hair behind her ears and cupped the sides of her neck, giving him a glimpse of the pink staining her cheeks. “Chloe told me that she and Vinnie liked to arrange what she called their ‘naughty dates.’ They’d have sex in unusual locations. Or, you know, in unusual ways. Looks like they’re going for a dark alley here.”
For a split second, he was completely sidetracked by the idea of Laura’s back flat against a wall with her legs wrapped around his hips. Her cheeks would be flushed with the same heat coursing through him. His name would be on her lips.
Suddenly, his jeans were uncomfortable, and he was hot in ways that had nothing to do with the layers of clothing he wore.
He shouldn’t be thinking naughty thoughts about Laura. Only, he couldn’t shake the idea that being intimate with Laura felt right, maybe even inevitable. That being with her would be as mind-blowing and as soul-touchingly perfect as her kisses. He wanted her. Her sister had never undermined his control like this. Had there ever been a woman who got under his skin so quickly or distracted him so easily or made him so crazy with the need to touch her that he hadn’t even noticed his fingers had traced the same pattern as hers and were now feathered into those silky gold and brown waves behind her ear?