by Julie James
He turned around. “Maybe if—” He stopped suddenly, presumably seeing the look on her face. “What? What’s wrong?”
It was the thing he’d done right then. When he’d run his hand over his mouth.
It struck Cameron—the piece she’d been missing all this time about the night of Mandy Robards’s murder. There’d been something in that moment when she’d seen the killer through the peephole as he’d left Mandy’s room, something she’d never been able to put her finger on.
It was the way his blazer had pulled tight across his shoulders as he’d reached forward to push open the stairwell door. There’d been a faint imprint underneath his blazer, the same kind she’d just seen underneath Jack’s blazer when he had reached up to rub his mouth.
Cameron stared at Jack in surprise.
“I don’t know if this means anything . . . but I’m pretty sure the guy who killed Mandy Robards was wearing a gun the night he strangled her.”
Twenty-seven
IT TOOK JACK a moment to process what Cameron had just said.
“A gun? What makes you think that?”
Cameron gestured to his shoulders. “There was a bulge under his blazer—I think he was wearing a shoulder harness. Working with FBI agents, I’ve probably seen it hundreds of times before but never consciously paid any attention to it. But when you moved your arms and rubbed your face like that, it looked kind of bulky right under your shoulders there . . .” She trailed off, as if unsure how to describe it.
“You could see my gun printing.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“And you’re sure you saw the same thing with the guy who left Mandy Robards’s room?”
“Yes. I always felt like there was something I was missing, I just couldn’t figure it out,” Cameron said. “Does that mean anything, that he was wearing a gun?”
Jack’s mind worked through this new development. They knew so little about the killer, everything meant something. And this piece of information could mean a lot. “I certainly find it interesting that he suffocated Mandy Robards when he had a gun on him.”
“Guns make noise.”
“Yes, they do. Although a professional could’ve brought a silencer to take care of that. I’m thinking more than ever now that this murder wasn’t something that was planned.”
“A jealous boyfriend, perhaps? Maybe he confronted Mandy about Senator Hodges and it escalated,” Cameron suggested.
Jack shook his head. “We already looked into that angle. The shoulder harness is an interesting development. You might not have recognized it, but someone with a trained eye would’ve spotted the gun right away. That would be a sloppy, risky move, with the city’s restrictions on handguns,” he said, referring to the fact that Chicago citizens were not permitted to own or carry handguns. “Makes me think this guy is licensed in this city to carry a concealed weapon.”
“Like a cop, you mean? Or an agent?”
“Maybe . . .” Jack mused over this for moment. Then something occurred to him. He strode over to the foyer and unzipped the duffel bag he’d left there earlier. He pulled out the case files he’d brought to the wedding—he’d made copies of everything and left the originals with Wilkins. He opened the file with the photographs of the people they’d interviewed in connection with Mandy’s murder.
He located the photograph he was searching for and took a closer look.
Interesting.
He handed the photograph over to Cameron. She pointed. “This is one of the photos you showed me the night of the bachelorette party.”
“His name is Grant Lombard,” Jack said. “He does private security for Senator Hodges. He carries a gun—I noticed it the night we interviewed him. He had the proper permits, and since Mandy had been suffocated the gun didn’t jump out to us as a red flag. I remember him from the interview—sort of a cool, professional type. I also recall him being about five feet eleven and one hundred seventy pounds, so he matches the physical description of the guy we’re looking for. I thought I remembered him having brown eyes, too, although I wanted to confirm that with the picture.”
“The guy who attacked me had brown eyes,” Cameron said.
“Yes, he did.”
“By any chance does Grant Lombard have an alibi for the night of Mandy Robards’s murder?”
“He says he was at home sleeping. Alone,” Jack said.
“Given the time of murder, there’s probably not too much we can make of that,” Cameron said.
“True. But perhaps I need to ask him if he has an alibi for the time of your attack.”
Cameron took a second look at the picture. “He can’t exactly use the ‘at home sleeping’ excuse for four thirty in the afternoon. There’s certainly enough here to make it worth checking into.”
Jack pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Wilkins. His partner didn’t answer, so he left a message on his voicemail. “Wilkins—it’s Jack. I might have something in the Robards case—a lead worth looking into, at least. Call me when you get this message. I’ll fill you in then.”
Jack hung up, glad to finally have an actual lead to pursue after two weeks of hunting and pecking in the dark. “We’re not going to talk to anyone about this except Wilkins and Davis,” he told Cameron. “Not yet, anyway. I don’t want to take any chances that the wrong person could find out that you know more than we’d originally thought.”
Although he didn’t say it out loud, Jack knew that Cameron, as a prosecutor, understood that the gun could be a key piece of evidence. If Lombard did turn out to be the guy they were looking for, she had just inadvertently stumbled upon the link that could ultimately lead to his arrest.
The idea left Jack feeling very skittish.
“I’m sorry I didn’t remember this right away,” Cameron said. “That night at the hotel, you warned me not to be sloppy—I should’ve thought of this earlier.” She looked annoyed with herself. “After all the times I’ve raked a witness over the coals for claiming to remember something after the fact. Now I’ve done exactly the same thing.”
Jack reached for her. “I hate to break this to you, Cameron, but you’re only human.”
“Shh . . . I’ve been trying to keep that under wraps for years.”
He smiled and kissed her forehead. “Your secret is safe with me.”
She leaned into him, resting her cheek against his shoulder. “So where does all this leave us for tonight?”
Jack wrapped his arms around her. “Unfortunately, it means I have some work to do. There are a few things I want to check into.”
Cameron pulled back, running her hands over his chest. “What kinds of things? And more important, how long will they take?” she asked with a coy smile.
Two days, Jack thought. For two days he’d been tortured by Martino’s interrogators and had never broken once—not a single word. But this woman had him wrapped around her finger in one second flat with just a smile.
He knew he should probably run as fast as he could in the opposite direction.
Instead, he kissed her.
She kissed him back playfully at first, until he moved her against the counter. He wound his tongue around hers and slid his hands to her waist.
“I need to get to work,” Jack said as he kissed the spot on her neck that he knew drove her crazy.
“You do,” she agreed, as her hands wandered down his stomach. “And I need to unpack.”
“I’ll walk you to the stairs,” Jack said. They kissed the entire way as he backed her through the kitchen and to the staircase. By the time they got there, his hands had somehow made their way underneath her shirt.
“So you’ll come upstairs when you’re done working, then?” Cameron asked.
“Yes. Shouldn’t be too long.” There was a lot of kissing after that, and suddenly they were on the stairs and he was between her legs. He pushed her shirt up and scooted down, trailing his lips across her stomach.
She sucked in her breath. “Okay. I’m going.”
“Yes. Go.” Jack pulled himself up and kissed her—just one last time. Then he felt Cameron’s hands unzipping the fly of his jeans. She reached into his boxers, and he groaned as she wrapped her hand around him.
He peered down and saw the sparkle in her eyes.
Work would just have to wait a few damn minutes.
“Do you have any condoms left in your suitcase?” he asked raggedly, at least having the presence of mind to think of that while she worked him over. The woman had the most incredible hands.
“Top outer pocket,” Cameron said.
Jack stepped away, swore as he rummaged around, finally realized he was in the wrong pocket, grabbed a condom, and came back.
Holy fuck.
The little minx had taken the initiative of slipping off her jeans.
But she’d left the naughty-boots on.
“You know I feel naked without my heels,” Cameron said.
Jack tossed the condom onto the stairs. He shrugged off his blazer, then took off his gun harness and set it on the stairs next to the condom.
“Slide up two steps,” he ordered her.
She did. He spread her legs and knelt between them on a lower step. He watched her eyes widen as he slid one of her legs over his shoulder, then the other. He felt her tremble as he bent down and licked the top lacy edge of her panties.
“Jack . . .” she murmured, threading her fingers through his hair.
He hooked his finger around the waistband of her panties and pulled them down a few inches. He lowered his mouth.
Cameron moaned. “Oh god, you are the devil . . .”
Enough said.
Twenty-eight
CAMERON STOOD IN her closet, zipping her bridesmaid’s dress into a garment bag, when she noticed a figure hovering in the doorway.
“Were you just singing ‘Bette Davis Eyes’?” Jack asked with a lazy grin.
Cameron blushed, not having realized that’s what she’d been doing. Nice—a mind-blowing double orgasm and Jack literally had her singing.
“I might have been humming a little,” she said nonchalantly.
He cocked his head. “I thought that was your song with Collin.”
She laughed at this. “I don’t have a ‘song’ with Collin. It’s just a song I like.”
Jack appeared somewhat appeased by this. “Your Internet connection is too slow.”
Thank God—he was cranky about something. This Jack she could handle. The Jack who cupped her face as he whispered the most romantic and sexy things anyone had ever said to her as he made love to her on her own staircase, on the other hand, was a force of a different nature.
“You mentioned that the other day,” she said. “I’ve never had a problem with my connection before. Are you trying to run some super-fast secret agent program?”
“Yes. But it’s slow even for that.”
His teasing eyes made her stomach do a little flip. So this is what it’s like to fall in lov—hold on—not going to go there yet, Cameron told herself. She’d been dating Jack for all of—what—two days?
“I hope you’re not looking to me for answers about this Internet thing,” she told him. “If there’s a problem, I turn the computer off and then on again. If that doesn’t fix it, I call Collin.”
Jack folded his arms across his chest. “I think we need to talk about this Collin dependency. Because there’s a new sheriff in town.”
“Hmm. That’s a little alpha for my tastes,” Cameron said with a disapproving air.
She tried not to look totally turned on.
“I’m going to take a look upstairs at your computer,” Jack said. “Maybe one of your neighbors is tapping into your wireless signal. It’s easy to do in the city, with houses as close as they are. What’s your password?”
“You won’t need one. I leave the computer running and just let it go into sleep mode whenever I’m not using it.”
Jack threw her a look that said this was a big no-no. “I think I now know why you’re having Internet problems.”
“What is it you’re trying to do from your laptop, anyway?” Cameron asked.
“Just a few things I want to have ready when Wilkins calls. I can log onto the Bureau’s network remotely—I want to take another look at Lombard’s cell phone records that we pulled a couple weeks ago. Plus I’ve been thinking about setting up a trace on his phone, although I’ll need one of the tech guys to help me with that. Then we can track everywhere Lombard’s been—at least with his phone—over the last few days.”
Cameron put the bridesmaid’s dress back into its spot on the rack behind the door. She glanced over her shoulder. “Without a warrant, that sounds highly illegal.”
“Legal, illegal, there are so many gray areas.”
“I didn’t hear that, Jack.”
“Nothing to hear, counselor. I never said a word.”
WHEN HE REACHED the third floor, Jack turned left and headed into the office. Cameron’s desk faced the window, overlooking her front yard and the street below. Jack went over to the desk and took a seat. When he moved the mouse, the computer sprang to life.
Possibly, he just needed to reboot the system since she’d left it running for who knew how long. Still, he wanted to be sure. He checked to see how many computers were linked to her router—as he’d said to her, maybe someone was pilfering her wireless connection and that was slowing everything down.
It took a second for the screen to open. What he saw threw him for a loop.
That can’t be right.
There were fifteen devices using Cameron’s Internet connection. Jack was aware of two—his laptop and Cameron’s desktop computer.
So what the hell were the other thirteen? It was possible that a neighbor could be stealing her signal, maybe even a couple, but thirteen neighbors using her Internet was extremely unlikely.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t thirteen computers, but something else. That was what Jack checked next. He pulled up the data stream for the first device.
Strange.
It was transmitting an audio signal.
But Jack heard nothing. He turned up the volume on Cameron’s computer. Still nothing. He moved onto the next device—this one was also transmitting an audio signal.
Again, nothing.
What the hell?
He quickly checked the other signals—all audio—and finally found something being transmitted through the eighth one.
It was the sound of a woman singing softly. A smoky voice he recognized well.
All the boys think she’s a spy, she’s got Bette Davis eyes.
Cameron. In her bedroom.
Jack could hear the sound of a drawer shutting, then a zipper, as she continued unpacking her suitcase.
Son of a bitch.
He deliberately began drumming his fingers on the desk—making enough noise for a test, but not too much—as he hurriedly checked the remaining devices. He knew what he would eventually find. When he got to the last audio signal, the sound of his fingers rapping against the wood echoed through Cameron’s computer, clear as day.
Jack would’ve sworn out loud if he could have.
The goddamn house was bugged.
His mind raced, dozens of thoughts all at once. The masked man . . . Thursday afternoon . . . they had assumed he’d been waiting to attack Cameron when she came home from work. Jack realized now that Mandy’s killer hadn’t been in the house at four thirty in the afternoon to avoid police surveillance; he’d been there because he was after something else entirely. He wanted to listen.
He wanted to know what Cameron knew.
Nowadays, microphones used for eavesdropping were smaller than ever—less than the size of a button. And all one needed was a computer, a wireless network, and the IP addresses of the monitoring devices. Not much harder than setting up a nanny cam, particularly for someone who knew what he was doing.
Jack pulled out his BlackBerry—luckily, now that they knew what the guy was up to, they could turn thi
ngs around. Assuming Mandy’s killer was actively monitoring the bugs, they could back-trace the link to the IP address of the computer he was using to listen to them. And once they had that information, they could pinpoint the location of that computer—and the killer.
Jack started to type a text message to Wilkins—obviously, he couldn’t call him or anyone else from the house with it being bugged. Then he stopped, realizing it would be faster to simply take Cameron out to his car and make the call from there. He’d have to slip her a note explaining the situation, of course, because they couldn’t say anything that would tip the killer off—he could be listening to them right then.
Jack’s stomach twisted into a knot.
The killer could be listening.
Assuming he’d been monitoring them, the killer would’ve heard every word he and Cameron had said that evening. Fragments of their conversations echoed through his head:
I’m pretty sure the guy who killed Mandy Robards was wearing a gun the night he strangled her . . .
His name is Grant Lombard. He does private security for Senator Hodges . . . He matches the physical description of the guy we’re looking for . . .
By any chance does Grant Lombard have an alibi for the night of Mandy Robards’s murder? . . .
Perhaps I need to ask him if he has an alibi for the time of your attack.
Then Jack recalled a separate conversation, an earlier one, and his whole body went cold.
To disarm the alarm, you just enter the security code.
What’s five-two-two-five?
It spells “Jack” on the keypad. Should be easy enough to remember.
The killer knew the code to the alarm.
“Cameron,” Jack whispered, his heart leaping into his throat. He’d left her alone . . . he couldn’t hear her right then . . . the second floor was too quiet . . . Jack dropped his BlackBerry and reached for his shoulder harness—
“Don’t make a fucking move,” commanded a low voice behind him.
The distinctive sound of the slide of a gun chambering a round echoed through the room.