Something About You

by Julie James

  He made quite an impression on her the first time he and his partner walked into her office. Cameron suspected nearly everyone who met Jack Pallas had the same reaction: with predatory brown eyes, nearly black hair, and dark facial scruff, he looked like the kind of guy that women—and men—should avoid in dark alleys. He had a cast on his right forearm, presumably an injury inflicted by Martino’s men, and he wore a navy T-shirt and jeans instead of the standard-issue suit and tie most agents were expected to wear. From the look of him, she was not at all surprised the FBI had chosen him for undercover work.

  And three years later—as he stood across from her in that hotel room that suddenly seemed far too small, with his eyes glittering with a low-simmering anger, and, yes, even despite the standard-issue suit and tie he wore this time—he looked not one bit less dangerous.

  “I want to talk to a lawyer,” Cameron said.

  “You are a lawyer,” he said. “And you’re not considered a suspect, so you’re not entitled to one, anyway.”

  “What am I considered, then?”

  “A person of interest.”

  This was bullshit. “Here’s the deal: I’m tired and not in the mood to play games. So if you don’t start telling me what’s going on, I’m walking,” Cameron said.

  Jack eyed her yoga sweats and Michigan T-shirt, looking unconcerned with her threats. Thank God she wasn’t still hanging out in her underpants.

  “You’re not going anywhere.” He pulled the chair out and gestured. “Take a seat.”

  “Thanks, but no. I think I’ll just stick with the plan where I walk out.” Before he could call her bluff, Cameron grabbed her purse and headed for the door. The hell with her stuff, she’d get it later. “It was nice catching up with you, Agent Pallas. I’m glad to see those three years in Nebraska didn’t make you any less of an asshole.”

  She threw open the door and nearly ran into a man standing in the doorway. He wore a well-cut gray suit and tie, appeared younger than Jack, and was African American.

  He flashed Cameron a knock-out smile while precariously balancing three Starbucks cups in his hands. “Thanks for getting the door. What’d I miss?”

  “I’m storming out. And I just called Agent Pallas an asshole.”

  “Sounds like good times. Coffee?” He held the Starbucks out to her. “I’m Agent Wilkins.”

  Cameron threw a knowing glance over her shoulder. “Good cop, bad cop? Is that the best you’re capable of, Jack?”

  He stalked across the room and stopped in the doorway, towering over her. “You have no idea what I’m capable of,” he said darkly.

  As he reached over and took one of the coffee cups from Wilkins, Cameron made a mental note to be careful when taunting a man who carried a gun, blamed her for nearly wrecking his career, and who was over a head taller than she was. She internally said a few profanities for her earlier decision to put on gym shoes; she needed at least three-inch heels to face off against Jack Pallas. Although that still would have only put her at his chin level. Not to mention that she would’ve looked like a major jackass wearing Manolos and yoga pants.

  Wilkins gestured with the coffee cups. “Do you two know each other?”

  “Ms. Lynde and I almost had the pleasure of working on a case together,” Jack said.

  “Almost? What does that mean?” Wilkins turned to Cameron with a look of realization. “Wait a second—Cameron Lynde? I knew that name sounded familiar. Of course, from the U.S. attorney’s office.” His light brown eyes lit up as he laughed. “You’re the one that Jack said had—”

  “I think we all recall just fine what Agent Pallas said,” Cameron interrupted. Three years ago, his words infamously had been broadcast all over the national news for nearly a week. She didn’t need to hear them again, particularly not with him standing right beside her. The experience had been embarrassing enough the first time around.

  Wilkins nodded. “Sure, no problem.” He looked between her and Jack. “So . . . this is awkward.”

  Changing the subject, Cameron pointed to the coffee. “Is that regular or decaf?”

  “Regular. I heard you had a long night.”

  She took one of the cups from him. She’d been up for twenty-three hours and adrenaline wasn’t cutting it anymore. She took a sip, sighing gratefully. “Thank you.”

  Wilkins took a sip of his coffee. “See, that’s all we are, just three people having coffee and talking. So what do you say—think you might want to stay and chat with us about what happened last night?”

  That almost got a smile out of Cameron. Wilkins, at least, appeared to be a pleasant, reasonable man. Too bad he’d drawn the short stick in his partner assignment.

  “That’s not half-bad,” she told him.

  Wilkins grinned. “The coffee or the good-cop routine?”

  “Both. If you would like to ask me some questions, Agent Wilkins, I’d be happy to cooperate.” Cameron brushed past Jack as she turned and headed back into the room. He and Wilkins followed her as she took a seat in front of the desk. She crossed her legs and faced the two FBI agents head-on.

  “All right. Let’s talk.”

  IF IT HAD been anyone other than Cameron Lynde, Jack probably would’ve found her attitude amusing.

  But since it was Cameron Lynde, he wasn’t laughing. In fact, there wasn’t anything about the situation that he found even remotely funny.

  He decided to let Wilkins take the lead in questioning her about the events of the night before. Not because she very clearly wanted nothing to do with him—he could care less about Cameron Lynde’s wishes—but rather because, not surprising given their history, she responded better to his partner than to him. The investigation was his focus, and he was not about to let personal issues get in the way.

  When he and Wilkins had first arrived at the Peninsula and Detective Slonsky told them the name of the witness in room 1307, for a split second Jack had thought the whole thing was a setup, some sort of welcome-back prank for his return to Chicago. And he still had considered this a possibility when they entered the crime scene. There was no body, after all—Slonsky said the paramedics had taken the victim to Northwestern Memorial in an attempt to revive her.

  Then he saw the videotape.

  After that, it was pretty clear to Jack that the call he had received at 5:00 A.M. from his boss, asking him to check out CPD’s claims of what they thought they might have stumbled into, was indeed not part of some elaborate joke. And his first priority at this point was to determine whether the FBI had jurisdiction over the matter.

  Cameron Lynde was the key to answering that question. If Jack believed her story, the FBI would have no choice but to conduct its own investigation. For that reason, as much as he might’ve wanted nothing more than to pawn her off onto Wilkins, as the senior agent on the scene he knew that wasn’t an option.

  From his post in the corner of the room, Jack studied her. Not surprisingly, she looked exhausted. And for some reason, she seemed shorter than he remembered. Probably because all the times he’d seen her three years ago had been during work hours and she’d been wearing heels.

  Yes, he remembered Cameron Lynde and her high heels . . . In fact, despite the fact that it had been three years since he’d last seen her, Jack was surprised at how accurate—and detailed—his memory of her had been: the long chestnut hair, the crystalline blue-green eyes, the attitude that he’d once—very briefly—found admirable.

  Then again, he shouldn’t be surprised he’d remembered those things. After all, he was an FBI agent and it was his job to remember details.

  And, he supposed, it didn’t hurt that Cameron Lynde was—some men other than him might say—fucking gorgeous.

  Which, to Jack, only made it that much more annoying that she also happened to be a total bitch.

  Thankfully, the long chestnut hair currently was pulled back into a ponytail, and the blue-green eyes had dulled a little given her lack of sleep. The yoga pants and Michigan T-shirt she wore were actually
kind of cute, but because of the aforementioned bitch factor, he ignored this.

  “So when they woke me up the second time,” Cameron was saying, “that’s when I decided to call Guest Services.”

  “I want to step back for a moment.” Jack’s interruption from the corner of the room startled Cameron; it was the first time he’d spoken since she’d begun giving her statement.

  “Tell me what you heard right before you fell asleep. Before the noises next door started up again,” he said.

  Cameron hesitated. He knew she didn’t want to answer his questions—she probably didn’t want to say anything to him at all, in fact—but now that she’d started cooperating, she didn’t have much choice.

  “I heard the door shut, as if someone was leaving the room,” she said.

  “Are you sure it was the exterior door you heard?” Jack asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t check to see if anyone left at that time?”

  Cameron shook her head. “No. Then the room went quiet for a while. For about a half hour or so.”

  “Tell me about the noises that woke you up.”

  Cameron turned to face him now that he had taken over the questioning. “What would you like to know, Agent Pallas?” she asked mock-politely.

  “I just told you. I’d like to know what you heard.”

  “Pretty much the same things I heard coming from the room the first time,” she said with an air of defiance.

  Jack cocked his head. “Really? You said the first time around you heard the people next door having sex.”

  “Yes, I think the ass slapping and the screams of ‘I’m coming’ gave that away.”

  Jack stepped out from the corner to approach her. “So when you woke up the second time, did you hear any asses being slapped?”

  “No.”

  From her expression, he could tell she didn’t enjoy being on the receiving end of a cross-examination. “How about the ‘I’m coming’ screams? Any more of those?”

  “I heard squealing.”

  “But no proclamations of impending orgasms?”

  She glared. “You made your point, Agent Pallas.”

  He drew closer and stared down at her. “My point, Ms. Lynde, is that I know you’re tired, but that’s no excuse for getting sloppy.”

  Cameron’s eyes filled with anger. But then she paused for a moment, and nodded. “Fair enough.”

  She looked over at the wall she shared with room 1308. “When I woke up the second time, I heard the bed banging against the wall, louder than before. But only a couple of times. Then like I said, I heard squealing.”

  “A man or a woman’s voice?” Jack asked.

  “A woman. The sound was muffled, as if her face was covered by a blanket or pillow.” Cameron turned back to him with a look of sudden realization. “She was suffocated, wasn’t she?” she asked softly.

  Jack debated whether to answer this but knew he eventually would have to fill her in anyway. “Yes.”

  Cameron bit her lip. “I just thought they were trying to be quieter about it. I didn’t realize . . .” She took a deep, steadying breath.

  “You couldn’t have known,” Wilkins assured her.

  Jack threw him a look—enough with the good-cop already. She was a big girl, she could handle it. “You told Detective Slonsky that you called security and the room went quiet again?”

  “And then I heard the door open, so I ran and looked out the peephole,” Cameron said.

  “Just being nosy?”

  The sarcasm seemed to reinvigorate her. “And thank goodness for that,” she said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have whatever information I know that I don’t yet realize I know.” She smiled ever so sweetly. “Besides, if I hadn’t been so nosy, Agent Pallas, you and I never would’ve had this lovely chance to reconnect.”

  Wilkins coughed while taking a sip of his coffee. It sounded suspiciously like a chuckle.

  Jack found her sarcasm laughable. Back when he was in Special Forces, before he’d joined the FBI, he’d interrogated foreign operatives, suspected terrorists, and members of various guerilla militias. He could certainly handle one cheeky assistant U.S. attorney. “I’m glad to see the coffee’s put a little fire back in you,” he said dryly. “Now why don’t you tell me what you saw when you were doing your civic duty and spying though the peephole?”

  Wilkins held up his hand. “Um, I’m thinking maybe I should pick back up with this.”

  Cameron and Jack answered simultaneously. “We’re fine.”

  “I saw a man leave the room, which I’m sure you know,” she told Jack.

  “Describe him.”

  “I already described him to Slonsky.”

  “Do it again.”

  Jack saw her eyes flash. She didn’t like being told what to do. Too bad.

  “Five foot eleven, maybe six feet tall,” she said. “Medium build. He wore jeans, a black blazer, and a gray hooded T-shirt pulled over his head. He had his back to me the entire time, so I never saw his face.”

  “Didn’t you think the hooded T-shirt was a little odd?” Jack asked.

  “I heard butt cheeks being slapped and walls that were banged so hard my teeth nearly rattled. Frankly, I’ve found this whole evening to be a little odd, Agent Pallas.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jack could see Wilkins glance up at the ceiling while fighting off another smile.

  “Are you certain about the man’s height?” Jack continued.

  Cameron paused, thinking. “Yes.”

  “How about his weight?”

  She sighed. “I’m really bad at guessing that kind of thing.”

  “Make an effort. Pretend this is something important.”

  Another glare.

  Cameron glanced over at Wilkins. “How much do you weigh?”

  “Wait—how come Jack doesn’t have to answer that?”

  “The man I saw seems closer to your build.”

  “Oh, so he’s a smaller guy, then?” Jack suggested helpfully.

  Wilkins turned around. “A smaller guy? I’m an inch above the national average. Besides, I’m spry.”

  “Let’s try to narrow this down,” Jack regrouped. “I weigh one-eighty-five, Agent Wilkins is about one-sixty. Given that, where would you say this guy falls?”

  She looked between the two men, considering this. “About one-seventy.”

  Jack and Wilkins exchanged looks.

  “What?” Cameron asked. “What does that tell you?”

  “So just to make sure we’re clear on this, the man you saw leave the room right before security arrived was about five-eleven or six feet tall, and around one hundred and seventy pounds. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” she agreed. “And I see that you’ve gotten whatever information it is you wanted out of me. So I would like some information in return.” She looked to Wilkins first, who looked to Jack.

  After debating a moment, he leaned against the wall. “Okay. Here’s what I can tell you.”

  “AND JUST SO we’re clear: everything I’m about to tell you needs to be kept confidential,” Jack told her. “In fact, if you weren’t with the U.S. attorney’s office, I wouldn’t be telling you anything.”

  Cameron got the message: he didn’t want to tell her jack-shit, but his boss had ordered him to share information as a professional courtesy.

  “Crystal clear, Agent Pallas,” she said.

  “You’ve obviously put a few things together, so I’ll speed through the preliminaries,” Jack began. “You called hotel security, they found the dead woman next door, so they called the paramedics and the police. CPD arrived at the scene, saw there were signs of a struggle, and began their investigation.”

  “What signs of a struggle?” Cameron asked.

  “To save time, you should assume going forward that anything I don’t tell you is a deliberate decision on my part.”

  Cameron looked up at the ceiling, biting her tongue. Of all t
he murder and she-had-no-friggin’-clue-what-else-but-something-that-apparently-involved-the-FBI crime scenes in all the hotels in all of Chicago, Jack Pallas had to walk into this one.

  “While CPD was conducting their sweep of the room, they stumbled onto something hidden behind the television across from the bed. A video camera.”

  “Do you have the murder on tape?” Cameron asked. If only all crimes came to prosecutors so neatly wrapped up.

  Jack shook his head. “No. What’s on the tape is the stuff that took place before the murder.”

  “Before the murder?” Cameron thought about the raucous sex noises she’d heard through the wall. “That must be quite a tape.”

  “It is,” Jack agreed. “Especially since the man on the tape is a married U.S. senator.”

  Cameron’s eyes widened. She had not expected that. She asked the obvious next question. “Which senator?”

  Agent Wilkins pulled a photograph out of the inner pocket of his suit jacket and handed it to Cameron.

  She glanced at the photograph, then back at Jack. “This is Senator Hodges.”

  “So you recognize him?”

  “Of course I recognize him,” Cameron said. Bill Hodges had represented the state of Illinois in the U.S. Senate for over twenty-five years. And lately she’d seen his face in the news more than usual—he had just been appointed the chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

  Cameron thought back to the redheaded woman she had seen on the paramedics’ gurney. “That wasn’t the senator’s wife in room 1308, was it?”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Jack said.

  “Who was she?”

  “Let’s just say that Senator Hodges was paying to have a lot more than his hardwood floors done last night.”

  Nice. “A prostitute?”

  “I think women at her level generally prefer to call themselves ‘escorts.’ ”