Authors: Karen Rose
Marcus exhaled heavily and followed her from the garage into her laundry room, closing the door behind them. ‘You’re trying to kill me now,’ he muttered, then smiled when he heard her chuckle.
‘Maybe just a little, but you can take it.’ She dropped to one knee at the sound of pattering of dog claws, their rhythm staccato. ‘Hey, boy,’ she crooned as a three-legged bulldog came around the corner. Her hands gently cupped the dog’s jowly head, her thumbs scratching his ears. ‘Fooled you, didn’t I? I came in a different door than I left this morning. Made you work to find me.’
The dog looked up lazily and uttered a token growl at Marcus, making her laugh. ‘He’s not much of a watch dog, but that’s okay. Zat, this is Marcus. He’s okay.’ She looked up at Marcus over her shoulder. ‘He won’t bite you.’
Marcus hadn’t thought he would. He’d been too absorbed in watching Scarlett’s face as she talked to the dog to even care if the dog had bitten him. She was softer, gentler than he’d ever seen her. And suddenly he envied the dog, who was the current recipient of that gentle touch. Slowly he eased down on one knee beside her, so close that their hips bumped and her cheeks colored the prettiest pink.
‘You adopted him from Delores’s shelter, didn’t you?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Not the first time I went out there, or even the second. But he was still around the third time I visited her. I kept thinking that a family with kids would take him and give him a good home, but nobody did. So I did.’ Her voice softened to a croon again. ‘Idiots didn’t know they’d passed over the best dog in the shelter, did they, Zat? So I’m the lucky one.’
Marcus’s throat tightened as he wondered if she knew how much she’d just shared with him. This woman fixed broken things. He wondered if she saw him as broken too. He didn’t want to think so, even though he knew it was true. ‘Why do you call him Zat?’ he asked as he scratched behind the dog’s ear, for the simple pleasure of brushing against her hand as he did so.
‘It’s for the movie –
Zatoichi
. He’s a blind swordsman.’ She shrugged. ‘Japanese martial arts movies are a thing with my brothers. Phin especially. I sent him a picture of Zat when I adopted him, hoping it would bring back some good memories of our
Zatoichi
movie marathons, but I haven’t heard a word.’
‘How long has it been since you sent it?’
‘A month.’
‘Send it again,’ he suggested softly. ‘He may want to reconnect but not be able to. Yet. He can always say he didn’t get the first text. Or the first twenty. Just don’t give up on him.’
‘I haven’t. I won’t.’ She met his eyes. ‘You haven’t given up on Stone.’
‘No. I can’t. He . . . needs me.’
‘Why?’
Marcus hesitated. ‘That may be a story for another day.’ He waited for her to get angry, but she surprised him again, nodding sagely.
‘I get it. Some secrets are yours to tell. Others aren’t.’ She stood up quickly and walked into her kitchen, done in classic 1970s. But it wasn’t retro, it was original, the wallpaper bright enough to make his eyes bleed. ‘It’s on my list of things to do,’ she said apologetically. ‘But the stovetop and the microwave both work, so I can eat until I can afford the oven I really want.’
‘What do you really want?’ he asked, curious now.
She opened a drawer and pulled out a catalog. ‘This.’
Marcus whistled at the six-burner, two-oven Viking range. ‘That’s a monster. Do you cook, too?’
‘I was one of seven kids and my mom worked a full-time job. We all can cook.’ She paused, lifting her brows. ‘But I can
cook
.’
‘I have one of these,’ he said, pointing to her dream oven. ‘In my apartment. It’s never been used.’
Her eyes widened. ‘That’s a crime.’ She took the catalog and put it away. ‘Speaking of crime, I need to walk Zat, get you back to your job and get back to mine.’
No, not yet. Just a few more minutes
. His mind scrambled, then remembered. ‘What about my head? You were supposed to fix it.’
She blinked, startled. ‘I forgot. I’m sorry. I’ll walk him and then tend to you. Come here, Zat. Let’s go outside.’
His gaze dropped to her ass when she bent over to fix a leash to the bulldog’s collar, and he shoved his hands back in his pockets when they itched to touch her smooth curves.
‘Just make yourself at home,’ she said. ‘But don’t sit on anything but the blue couch or the rockers in the living room. Everything else I’m still fixing.’
Marcus followed her to the back door, watching as she patiently waited for the three-legged dog to hop down the steps. Then he watched her pull her cell phone from her pocket as she walked with Zat around her backyard, where the dog proceeded to water every blade of grass he could.
‘You’re letting out all my AC,’ she called over her shoulder, not turning to look at him. ‘Close the door or you’ll air-condition the whole damn neighborhood. I’ve got to check my mail. I’ll be in soon.’
He complied reluctantly, not wanting to miss a moment of their time together. Which made him sound all touchy-feely, he thought, but he didn’t care. Now that he’d decided to go for this relationship, he didn’t seem to be able to slow himself down. He wanted her – all of her. And he wanted her now.
She, however, seemed to be wanting to slow things down. He’d have to follow her lead on this one. There was no way he was forcing her to do anything. Even if it killed him. Which it just might.
Reining in his desire, he went into the living room to sit on the blue couch, but stopped short in the doorway. The room resembled a furniture store more than a living room. There were desks and nightstands and even two twin-sized headboards leaning against a wall. Chairs of all shapes and sizes were clustered in groups. Some, like the desk in the corner, were clearly broken, some were works in progress, and others appeared pristine. There were upholstered chairs, desk chairs, dining room chairs . . . and three brand-new rocking chairs.
The rockers drew his interest, and he crouched beside one of them, running his hands over the wood, looking it over. The workmanship was flawless, the design sleek yet homey. A carved inscription on one of the curved runners caught his eye.
SAB.
Scarlett A. Bishop.
She made these.
‘Shit,’ he whispered. ‘She’s really good.’
‘Thank you,’ she said from behind him.
He looked over his shoulder to see her standing there, her phone in one hand, the wrapped-up leash in the other. She’d shed the tactical vest and her weapons, leaving her in a thin top that showcased every curve. ‘What does the A stand for?’ he asked.
Her dark brows lifted. ‘You mean that didn’t come up when you ran my license plates?’
He refused to be embarrassed about that. ‘It probably did. I was so relieved that the Land Cruiser belonged to you that I didn’t ask for anything else.’
One corner of her mouth quirked up in an almost-smile. ‘Anne. The “A” is for Anne.’
‘Good Catholic middle name,’ he said, and was startled to see her almost-smile fade as her eyes went expressionless.
‘The Bishops are a good Catholic family,’ she said bitterly, then turned on her heel and disappeared down the hallway, leaving him to wonder what he’d said. Because he’d obviously touched a raw nerve.
He heard water running, and thirty seconds later she reappeared carrying a tackle box with
FIRST AID
neatly printed on the side. ‘Have a seat on the sofa and I’ll take care of your head. Then I really need to start working on finding Annabelle. I ran a search of all the churches within a two-mile radius around the Anders house. There are over forty of them, assuming Tabby attended a church nearby. If we expand the search area, we’re up in the hundreds.’
Marcus didn’t think he should tell her that he’d already tasked Gayle with calling the churches in the area, asking if they had a parishioner named Annabelle. Gayle had found nothing so far. But another thought had occurred to him during the mostly silent drive to Scarlett’s house. While she sat the tackle box on a scarred end table, he sat down on the blue couch as she’d directed, then took out his phone and brought up the website he used for background checks. But before he started his search, he noticed that the contents of her first aid kit would put most medics’ packs to shame.
‘Are you preparing for the apocalypse?’ he asked, pointing to the box.
‘Close enough,’ she said, taking out a pair of latex gloves. ‘I’m the babysitter of choice for all my nieces and nephews. They can play rough with each other, so I’m fully certified in CPR – adult and infant – and have taken the basic paramedic’s training. No kid’s getting hurt on my watch.’ She glanced at him as she pulled on the gloves. ‘Do you have any latex allergies?’
‘Nope. My body is one hundred percent latex tolerant. Especially the retractable parts.’ He waggled his brows, which made her laugh.
She looked over his shoulder at his phone. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I was thinking about Annabelle and Tabby, how their paths might have crossed and how Tabby would get in touch with her.’
‘They go to church together and she used that cell phone she was trying to reach when you found her.’
‘Maybe. Probably, even. But what if it’s simpler than that?’
She sat on the arm of the sofa, so close he could smell her hair. ‘What do you mean?’
He forced his mind to clear, a nearly impossible task with her so near. ‘Whoever took the Anderses – kicking and screaming – didn’t know to look for Tabby, which means Chip kept her a secret. Do you think he’d let her go to church?’
Scarlett bit her lower lip and Marcus swallowed a groan. She shook her head. ‘No, you’re right. Vince Tanaka had our resident Internet guru do a background on Tabby. I saw the email when I was out walking Zat. The search came back saying that Tabitha Anders’s last known address was outside Boston, but the address was obviously a fake. Chip was hiding her for some reason. So if she and Annabelle didn’t meet at church . . .’
‘Maybe her name is Church.’ He typed in Annabelle Church and the Anderses’ zip code. Fifteen seconds later, he had a match. Fifteen seconds after that, Google had given him the connection between Tabby and Annabelle. ‘Annabelle Church lives three blocks away from the Anderses and is a regular golfer at the country club.’ He turned his phone so that she could see the article and photo that Google had provided. ‘She won last year’s seniors’ tournament.’
Scarlett leaned closer to his phone, filling his head with her scent. But she didn’t seem to be aware of the effect she had on him, absorbed only in reading the article on Annabelle Church.
‘This says that she won the tournament despite suffering from a seizure disorder that’s left her unable to drive a car. She drives to the course in this tricked-out golf cart using the bike path.’ Taking off the gloves, Scarlett pulled up a map of the Anderses’ neighborhood on her phone. ‘The bike path runs through the trees behind the Anders house. You’re right. I guess I made that harder than it needed to be.’
‘It was only a guess, Scarlett.’
‘A damned good one. Let me get this name to Isenberg. She can send a squad car and someone from Children’s Services to get the baby and bring Ms Church in for an interview.’ She got up from the arm of the sofa and gave him a hard nod. ‘That was good thinking, Marcus. Thank you.’
Her approval warmed him inside even as he cooled on the outside when she stepped away from the sofa to make her call. He sighed heavily, knowing that he’d screwed his chances of getting close to her again as she tended the cut on his head.
Finding Ms Church had been the right thing to do, but too many times the right thing sucked ass.
Eighteen
Cincinnati, Ohio
Tuesday 4 August, 4.15
P.M.
‘That was good investigating,’ Lynda Isenberg said when Scarlett gave her Annabelle Church’s address.
‘I can’t claim credit,’ Scarlett told her. ‘Marcus O’Bannion found her.’
‘Oh. I see.’ A very long pause. ‘Anything you need to tell me, Detective Bishop?’
Scarlett winced. Lynda only called her ‘Detective Bishop’ when Scarlett had done something wrong. Kind of like being called ‘Scarlett Anne’ by her parents. Both pissed her off. ‘No, ma’am.’
‘I see. Are you sure? I understand he was there with you at the crime scene.’
‘Yes, ma’am, he was. And yes, I’m sure. I have no conflict to report.’ Not yet, anyway. All they’d done was kiss a little.
Well, okay, that kiss wasn’t exactly little
. But Marcus wasn’t a suspect and it wasn’t like they’d declared their undying love for each other. Either of those would be a conflict of interest. ‘I have to feed and walk my dog but I’ll be in the office by the time you have Ms Church brought in to CPD. See you then.’ She hung up before Lynda could point-blank ask her if Marcus was with her, only to have her cell phone start chiming with an incoming call.
Scarlett grimaced at the caller ID. When it rained, it poured. She hit
accept
and swallowed her sigh. ‘Hi, Dad.’
On the sofa, Marcus’s eyes widened with interest.
‘Scarlett Anne, are you all right?’ he demanded. ‘I heard you were shot at.’
Scarlett let the sigh out. Being part of a family of cops meant never having any privacy on the job. Her father had particularly good sources of information – he and Lynda Isenberg were old friends. ‘I’m fine, Dad. Not a scratch on me.’
‘I heard you were in the line of fire because of a reporter.’ Her father’s disdain was unmistakable.
‘He’s a publisher, not a reporter.’ It was a fine distinction, but a critical one. A publisher who did the right thing even when it meant losing a scoop. ‘And actually I don’t have a scratch because of him. He pushed me out of the way. Took all the flying splinters and rock himself, shielding me.’
‘Oh,’ her father said gruffly. ‘Well. I’ll thank him when I meet him, then. Your mother wants to see you, to prove to herself that you’re not dead.’
Scarlett shook her head. Her mother would never ask her brothers to do the same. ‘Tell her I’m not dead,’ she said, trying to keep the attitude from her tone. ‘I’ll drop by when I can, but it won’t be today.’
‘I should make you tell her yourself,’ he grumbled. ‘But I know you’re busy with this case.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘Stay safe, okay, baby?’
She forced her lips to curve. ‘Okay,’ she said with a pleasantness that was equally forced.
A slight hesitation. ‘Listen, about this publisher . . . Your lieutenant seems to think he’s more than a witness to you.’
Scarlett’s teeth clenched. Yet another question her parents wouldn’t dream of asking her brothers. ‘Is this an official question? Sir?’
A pause, longer than the hesitation. ‘And if it is?’ her father asked crisply.
‘Then I’ll tell you the same thing I just told Isenberg. No conflict of interest. Sir. I have things to do. I’ll call when I can.’ She hung up and drew a deep breath.
Her father always did this to her. Always treated her like she was five years old. She’d thought when she earned her badge that he’d change, but he hadn’t. She’d thought when she earned her detective shield that he’d change, but he hadn’t then either. He might never change. She’d learn to be okay with that. Someday. At least she knew it was because he cared, but that didn’t make it any easier to tolerate.
‘I’ve made things difficult for you, haven’t I?’ Marcus asked quietly from the sofa.
Yes, you have, but I’m okay with that too
. ‘No, not really.’
‘You lied to your boss. And to your father. Who is also a cop, I take it?’
She frowned at him. ‘Yes, he is a cop. I come from a long line of cops. And no, I didn’t lie to either of them.’
‘You told both of them that you didn’t have a conflict.’
‘And I don’t. You’d be a conflict if you were a suspect.’
Or if I were to fall in love with you
. ‘You are not a suspect.’
‘And if I were?’
‘If I had even an inkling that you were, your ass would be in lockup so fast your head would spin. But you’re not a suspect.’ She shrugged. ‘And sticking with me is the best way to keep it that way. If you’re with me, nobody can accuse you of anything.’
His lips curved, making her heart stutter in her chest. ‘Protecting me, Scarlett?’
‘Maybe. Maybe you need it.’ She went back to the table that held her first aid supplies. ‘Mr I’ve-got-concrete-in-my-head.’
‘Touché,’ he said, sounding pleased. ‘You’re going to fix me up after all. I thought you’d be racing out of here to interview Annabelle Church.’
‘It’ll take Lynda a little while to coordinate a pickup with Children’s Services, and I’m only fifteen minutes from the precinct, so we’ve got a little time.’ She pulled a headlamp from the box, slipped it over her head and turned it on, then went back to the bathroom to wash her hands again. A minute later she was back, snapping on a new set of gloves. ‘Hold still,’ she said, sitting on the arm of the sofa again so that she could get close to the cut on his head. Holding a pair of tweezers in one hand, she pushed his hair from the wound with the other and wiped away the dried blood with some soft, dry gauze.
‘You look like a coalminer,’ he said gruffly.
She frowned again. ‘You do realize I’m holding a pair of very pointy tweezers mere millimeters from your head?’
‘You do realize you’ve got your breasts in my face? I have to distract myself somehow, and commenting on your coalminer-ness was the first thing that came to mind.’
She looked down and her cheeks instantly heated, because he was right. She had pressed her breasts almost in his face. She leaned back and dropped her hands, trying to figure out how she could accomplish her task without getting so close to him.
He scowled up at her. ‘I’ll be quiet. Just get the cut cleaned. I can control my baser instincts that long.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m used to patching up little people. The angle is different.’ She scooted closer on the arm of the chair so she didn’t have to lean over so far. ‘I would have had you sit on one of my bar stools,’ she said as she finished wiping the dried blood from his head, ‘but they’re all wobbly. I’ll fix one of them so you’ll have a stable place to sit while I do this the next time you almost get yourself killed.’
‘God, you’re snotty when you’re being Nurse Nancy.’
She started to laugh, but held it back to keep her hands steady. ‘Nurse Nancy?’
‘It’s a guy thing. Naughty nurse fantasy.’
A single glance at his lap told her he wasn’t bluffing. ‘Well thank you very much,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Now I’ve got that picture in my mind.’
‘Are you wearing the naughty nurse uniform in that mental picture?’ he asked slyly.
She huffed. ‘I am now. I thought you were going to be quiet. I have to make sure you don’t have any debris in here before I clean it.’ She stole another glance at the very impressive bulge in his lap and had to draw a steadying breath before leaning a little closer to examine the wound. ‘I don’t see any splinters of wood or shards of concrete.’ She reached for a bottle of wound cleaner. ‘This should help numb it while I’m cleaning it. Again, no allergies, right?’
‘None,’ he said, much quieter than he had been before.
She’d leaned in and was squirting cleaner into the wound when he spoke again, his tone very serious. ‘What did your neighbor mean about “that other one”? The one you gave walking papers to?’
Damn you, Mrs Pepper
. The old woman had said that on purpose. ‘Bryan is an ex. Kind of, sort of.’
‘Kind of, sort of?’ he asked sharply. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, first, I did give him his walking papers, so he is no longer anything other than an old friend. We’ve been friends since college. Kind of, sort of means that he was off and on. Never anyone steady. We both knew that. He didn’t want to take the walking papers at first and kept ignoring them. So I put my foot down and Mrs Pepper heard us.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘She heard you? Was he fighting with you?’
‘No, not that time. We were standing in the driveway. I didn’t want to let him in the house.’
‘Not that time?’
‘Like I said, he didn’t want to take his walking papers the first several times I handed them to him.’
‘When was the first time?’
‘Eight months ago.’
His brows shot up. ‘Eight?’
She knew what he was asking. ‘Like I said, we were off and on, mostly off. “On” was usually at his instigation. He was in a relationship until eight months ago, so that was the first time it came up.’
‘And if he’d instigated something nine and a half months ago?’
Right before she’d first met Marcus. She focused on swabbing the cut on his head to keep her hands steady. ‘We’d have probably been on. Bryan has always been a friend, Marcus. We always knew that one of us would end this off-and-on thing eventually.’
‘Will he remain your friend?’
She hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, packing the cut with treated gauze. ‘This stuff has antiseptic in it, so you don’t need to add anything else. You should probably have a doctor look at the cut. I didn’t see any splinters, but sometimes they hide.’ She turned back to her kit to trade the wound cleaner for a roll of tape. ‘I’m not sure this will keep the gauze in the wound with your hair in the way.’
‘Then shave it,’ he said curtly. ‘I don’t want to go to the hospital or see a doctor.’
Scarlett winced, both at the hurt in his tone and at the thought of shaving off any of his beautiful dark hair. She changed the blade on her razor and cleared away just enough hair so that the tape would stick. ‘Bryan and I go back a long way, Marcus.’
‘Back to your college days. I heard you.’
And it had hurt him. That much was clear. ‘He’s more like a . . . war buddy than anything else. We went through a rough time together and for a long time only had each other.’ She hesitated again, then sighed. ‘I don’t love him, okay? I never did. Not like that, anyway.’
A moment of silence. ‘What did you go through?’ he asked carefully.
Her hands stilled as she pressed the tape to his scalp. ‘You remember me saying that I’d lost a friend back in college?’
‘Of course. Michelle.’
He’d remembered Michelle’s name. Scarlett braced herself, willing the words to come. ‘I found her body. Thrown behind a dumpster, like she was trash. And there was so much blood.’ She gritted her teeth, forcing the images to the side of her mind. ‘Bryan was with me. We found her together. It’s not something either of us has managed to completely leave behind.’
His sigh was heavy. ‘I’m so sorry, Scarlett.’
‘It’s all right. But there will always be that link between us. I can’t make it go away. Trust me, I’ve tried. I’m sorry.’ She’d finished her task, but didn’t move away from him. And then a second later she didn’t want to move anywhere. He’d leaned into her, closing the distance between them, resting his head against her.
The kiss they’d shared earlier had been intimate. This was much more so.
She peeled off the gloves so that she could stroke his hair. ‘I told him that it was over. Today, in fact. When I came home from the alley, he was waiting for me. I’d been avoiding him for the last few weeks because he wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
He shuddered in pleasure when she raked her fingers through the hair at the back of his head, so she did it again. ‘Do I need to go beat him up for you?’ he asked lazily.
Her lips curved. ‘Thank you, but no. I can do that on my own, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I . . . told him that there was someone else. He finally got it.’
Marcus pulled back to meet her eyes. ‘That someone is me, right?’ he asked lightly.
Scarlett chuckled. ‘Yes, Marcus.’
He rested his head against her again, his shoulders relaxing. ‘Just checking.’
That he could make her smile even as the images of Michelle’s broken body continued to flash through her mind was nothing short of a miracle. A gift she didn’t intend to squander. She pulled him a little closer, her eyes sliding shut when he wrapped an arm around her waist and simply held her. She felt . . . cocooned. Safe. Wanted.
His arm remained curved around her waist, his hand lightly gripping her hip. He touched her nowhere else, but God, she wanted him to. Her breasts grew heavy, her nipples tight and sensitive, her panties moist. She could smell her own arousal. From the deep breaths he drew, she could tell he could too.
She was going to have to change her clothes before heading back to work. She couldn’t go question a woman named Church while smelling like sex.
‘I have a confession to make,’ he murmured, his breath warm against her breast.
She swallowed hard, her mind no longer on the job. ‘More stalking?’ she asked, the words coming out husky and thick.