Was that a pink hue to her cheek or just a trick of the light? Had to be the latter. He doubted if anything could make Rayne Cavanaugh blush.
“Only to the suit.” She obviously had something on her mind. He nodded toward the bathroom. “Mind if I get dressed?”
When he moved, his muscles rippled. Rayne cleared her throat. “Actually, I’d prefer it.”
She heard him laugh as he walked back into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Something burned within her, whether in reaction to his laugh or his very firm, spectacular body, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. The flames had to be smothered either way.
In an effort to distract herself, she looked around the hotel room. There was just the single room, not unlike hundreds of others within the hotel. The room didn’t befit a man whose parents could have bought and sold Rhode Island twice over.
She raised her voice to be heard through the bathroom door. “I thought you were doing well.”
“I am.”
“This isn’t a very fancy room.” Without question, his brother would have demanded the best the hotel had on hand.
“I don’t require all that much. I don’t believe in throwing money away on trappings I don’t need.”
“Except for the Porsche,” she said.
There was humor in his voice when he echoed, “‘Except for the Porsche.” The bathroom door opened.
His hair still damp, he came out wearing a pullover blue sweater and jeans. A puff of warmth followed him. Cole was still barefoot and she found she had to work hard at not letting her thoughts drift back to the way he’d looked in his towel.
Wine wasn’t the only thing that got better with age, she thought.
Because she felt he could read her mind, she gestured around the room. “Is that in rebellion against your parents?”
The smile on his lips was self-deprecating. Or perhaps just amused. “I’m almost twenty-nine years old. I’m too old to rebel for rebellion sake.” He’d never particularly welcomed thoughts or conversations about his parents, now more than ever. “I always thought they just possessed things to make up for how empty and shallow they really were.”
“I take it that your first meeting with them didn’t exactly go well,” Rayne said.
He poured himself a drink from the bar. Something told him he might need one. “How did you know I went to see them?”
“I didn’t.” When he silently raised a glass in her direction, she shook her head. If there was one thing she desperately needed right now it was a clear head. Cole’s near naked image refused to vacate her brain. Alcohol would only make it more vivid. “I took a guess. Eric’s in jail and you can’t bail him out, but they can. I figured you’d go to see them.”
He’d called his lawyer to see if there was any way he could put up his business to raise the money, but most of his funds were in escrow pending the completion of his latest project. It was a formality, but right now, a damn inconvenient one.
He took a taste of his drink, then set it down. “So, did any of your powers of deduction get anywhere today where it counts?”
“I talked to Longwell—the first officer on the scene,” Rayne added in case he wasn’t familiar with the name.
“I know who Longwell is,” he told her patiently. Sitting on the bed, he gestured for her to take a seat.
She did, choosing the single chair at the table. It seemed somehow safer that way. “Did your homework?”
“I found out everything I could before I came to you,” he informed her.
It was time to get down to the reason she was here. His close to all-natural appearance earlier had almost thrown it completely out of her head. She watched his eyes as she said, “Here’s something you might not know. Someone called me on my cell phone just as I was leaving the station.”
He got the feeling she was leaving something unsaid. Like an accusation. Impatience flared up, coming out of nowhere. He got up again, leaving his drink on the nightstand.
“You’re right. I didn’t know that.” Cole ran his fingers through his hair before picking up a hair dryer. But rather than use it, he met her eyes in the mirror. “Is there a point to this?”
Because it was hard to see his eyes from her vantage point, she moved to stand next to him, staring up into his face. “The point is that whoever was on the line told me to back off.”
“Back off?”
“Back off,” she repeated.
He frowned, putting the dryer down. “What else did he say?”
“Just that.”
“No threat beyond that?”
“It was implied.” He’d looked properly surprised, but it could all be an act. “You don’t know anything about that, then?”
He turned from the mirror, their bodies inches apart, his challenging hers. “Why would I know anything about that phone call? What are you saying, Rayne? Why would I threaten you?”
“To get me more interested.”
It took him a second to follow her reasoning and even then, it didn’t make sense. But neither did having Eric sit in jail, accused of murder. “So you work like that? The complete opposite of what’s asked of you? The Eve syndrome? Forbidden fruit turn you on?”
She looked at him long and hard.
Yes,
whispered through her brain as she felt every nerve ending stand at attention.
When the forbidden fruit looks like you.
It was a credit to her self-control as well as her talents for performance that she said, “Not particularly. But getting at the truth does.”
Turning away, he switched on the dryer and passed it over his semidry hair. Instead of a brush or a comb, he used his fingers.
“Sounds to me as if someone doesn’t want you to get at the truth.”
She raised her voice to be heard above the hair dryer. “Or someone wants me to think that someone doesn’t want me to get at the truth.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t do riddles. But if you think I called you, have the phone records checked out.” Finished, he put down the hair dryer and plucked his cell phone out of his back pocket. He handed the silver half-shell to her. “Mine. The hotel’s.”
There was a third, more likely possibility. “You could have placed the call from a public phone.”
She made no effort to take the phone from him. He tucked it back into his pocket. “Well, that makes things harder now, doesn’t it? You’ll just have to take my word for it. I was too busy talking to Eric’s ex-girlfriends, or at least scratching the surface of that very large, inharmonious group, to call you up and do heavy breathing.” Cole was beginning to think his brother needed some serious help when it came to selecting the right type of woman. He’d run across nothing but gold diggers and airheads so far.
“No heavy breathing,” she contradicted. “Just two words. Said twice.”
His eyes met hers and held for a long moment. He hadn’t a clue what was going on in her mind, but it didn’t take much to know that she didn’t exactly think of him as an ex-Boy Scout. Few people did. Only the ones whom he’d managed to place into houses, making their impossible dreams come true.
“I guess you’ll just have to trust me on this, then. I didn’t call you and, before you ask, I didn’t have anyone else call you, either.” Cole appealed to her sense of logic. “My brother is going to be on trial for his life unless I find out something to save him. I don’t have any time to play games, Rayne. Now you can believe me or not, the choice is yours, but I can’t make it any plainer than that.”
She studied him for a very long moment. She wasn’t one to give her trust easily. Of all of her siblings, she’d always been the most cautious, the most suspicious.
But something about the expression on Cole Garrison’s face, the look in his eyes, negated any distrust she naturally felt.
“All right,” she conceded, “I believe you.”
Chapter 7
H
e looked at her for a long moment. Rayne had absolutely no way to gauge what he was thinking. The man would make an excellent poker player. Something her cousin Janelle could appreciate.
She, however, was given to more than her share of impatience. She liked having answers, not questions and this man raised more than his share of the latter without yielding any of the former.
“Good,” he finally said. “Trust is the cornerstone of everything else. Let’s move forward.”
She was still trying to find her way here. The fact that Cole still smelled of soap and her mind was still fresh with the impression of his dripping, near nude body wasn’t helping to keep her brain at its sharpest. “Excuse me?”
“Move forward,” he repeated. He was hoping for more, for some bombshell of a discovery that would blow the door off Eric’s cell and set his brother free. When she didn’t say anything, his eyes narrowed as he studied her. “You didn’t come to my hotel room just to ask me if I’d called you on your cell phone and done a bad imitation of Darth Vader, did you?”
And get one hell of an eyeful, Rayne added silently, though she maintained an impassive expression on her face. “Actually, I did. And as for the voice, it wasn’t as deep as Darth Vader’s. Just male.” That wasn’t strictly a nondisputed fact. “Actually, I’m not even sure about that,” she admitted.
“Voice synthesizer?”
She shook her head. “Whisper. Whoever called me on my cell whispered. Could have been a female, now that I think of it. Some women have deep voices.”
Rayne had a deep voice, he thought. Just deep enough to slide effortlessly under a man’s skin. His eyes held hers. “Like warm bourbon being poured down the side of a glass on a cold day.”
The look in his eyes was doing it again, causing earthquakes in heretofore peaceful regions. Rayne took in a long breath. There was no getting away from it, something was definitely going on here between the two of them, something she couldn’t—wouldn’t—put a label on. But that didn’t make it disappear.
“Something like that,” she murmured.
He didn’t bother hiding his disappointment. Granted he’d approached her on Friday and this was only Monday, but still, he’d expected her to come through with some sort of tidbit, some kind of insight in that time. “And that’s it?”
Why did she suddenly feel like a gifted child who had uttered the wrong last letter in a national spelling bee contest? She hadn’t failed, not yet. It was too soon to fail.
Too soon was a relative term, she reminded herself. In this case, Eric Garrison didn’t have all that much time before too soon became too late.
However, that didn’t change the fact that she didn’t have anything new to offer his brother. “No earth-shaking revelations, if that’s what you mean. The only inside track I have is to paperwork I’m sure you’ve already gotten your hands on nefariously.” The items in the evidence room had been no less enlightening. So far, she had to admit that the case was stacking up against Eric. And yet when she’d read the autopsy report she’d come away with a nagging feeling there was something she was missing.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “You mean, the official police report.”
So far she’d only been able to get her hands on the first part of the report. Longwell wasn’t an eager beaver, but he was good about filing his paperwork. “I took a look at Officer Longwell’s statement. No surprises there. As for Rollins and Webber—” she shrugged vaguely to hide her frustration “—neither one takes too kindly to having someone looking over their shoulder. They’re kind of like my partner that way.”
He was surprised by her admission. He’d thought that all police partners were supposed to present unified fronts to the public and one another. “Your partner doesn’t like you looking over his shoulder?”
Patterson hadn’t gone out of his way to hide the fact that he felt saddled with her. She knew that he was waiting for her to fail ignobly. The fact that she did well only seemed to irritate him further.
She laughed dryly. “My partner doesn’t like anyone who can’t remember the Vietnam war from firsthand experience.”
“You don’t get along.”
Because she was determined to do well and not give her father any cause to be ashamed of her, she kept her tongue in check whenever Patterson directed a snide comment in her direction.
“Let’s just say we have a tentative truce. I’m sure if I put in for a transfer tomorrow, Patterson wouldn’t shed any tears. He thinks I am where I am because of my name.”
He could see how that ticked her off. Not that he blamed her. “Are you?”
A dangerous light shone in her eyes as she looked at him. He found himself amused as only someone in the same boat could have been.
“The only thing my name ever did for me was put unnaturally high expectations on my performance. Being a Cavanaugh doesn’t open doors, it gets you an audience, people watching, waiting to see if you mess up.”
“Not easy living with a name, is it?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again, realizing that, by the look on his face, she’d stumbled across something else they had in common. “You’d be the one to know, wouldn’t you?”
He laughed shortly. “Firsthand.” But that was where their similarities ended. “Except that I gather you have a family that’s supportive.”
There, she heard it again, that little ribbon of envy in his voice “And you had the Addams Family.”
His smile faded into a grim line. “Yeah.”
It was one thing to have differences, to disapprove of a family member’s actions. It was another to turn your back on them in times of crisis. Try as she might, she couldn’t wrap her mind around the latter. No matter what, they always came through for one another. She was living proof of that.
“And they really won’t bail Eric out?”
He could feel his adrenaline rising again, his anger against his parents growing. They’d contributed to the man Eric was, or wasn’t. They had no right to turn their backs on him like this.
“They’d be happy if Eric just conveniently faded away. Their only real concern is how this whole scandal reflects on them.” He realized he’d begun pacing and forced himself to stop. “That’s always been their only concern. The almighty reputation of the Garrisons.” He shook his head. “With the kind of background Eric and I’ve had, it’s a miracle we didn’t turn out to be homicidal maniacs.” The impact of his words hit him. He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Sorry, slip of the tongue.”
A very bad slip, she thought. “I wouldn’t do that around people if I were you.” She saw the suspicion in his eyes as he looked at her. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
No, he decided, he didn’t. He glanced toward the telephone and the menu he’d left beside it. He’d intended to order in after his shower. He still did. “Are you hungry? I can have something sent up.”
“I thought you already ate.”
“My lap had the Rigatoni Alfredo,” he reminded her. “I didn’t.”
She watched him reach for the phone. He was going to call room service one way or another, and maybe it wouldn’t be too bad, having dinner with him in his room. There was less noise to compete with.
Just as he raised the receiver to his ear, she said, “I put in for some personal time.”
“At the precinct?”
She nodded. He replaced the receiver into the cradle again, puzzled.
“Why would you do that?” he asked.
Because something was egging her on to give Eric’s case her full attention, despite the evidence against it. “Because while I’m good at multitasking, I can’t do my job properly and look into your brother’s case at the same time. Too many feathers getting ruffled.”
By that he surmised she meant the police personnel. He didn’t want her doing anything that would place her in harm’s way. Or make valuable pieces of evidence disappear. “Does anyone know you’re looking into it?”
“Longwell probably suspects something.” She saw his frown deepen and had to admit that it was a formidable sight. She wondered if he used it on the people who worked for him. “Don’t worry about him, we go way back.”
Cole was far from convinced that it was all right, but it wasn’t that which prompted him to ask, “How far back?”
“We’re friends, or were until I got my promotion.”
“Jealousy?”
She doubted if Longwell had a jealous bone in his body, at least, not where work was concerned. He wasn’t petty, like Patterson and some of the others, who had viewed her promotion as a form of nepotism.
“No, we just drifted apart. Different worlds,” she explained. “There’s a little bit of a caste system going on within the police department. We all band together when threatened from without, but internally—” she shrugged “—I guess it’s no better or worse than every other place. One group doesn’t quite trust the other.”
He immediately thought of the investigation into Eric’s case. “What did you mean by ‘threatened from without’? You mean, when someone tries to shake a case?”
“Something like that.” She nodded at the phone, making up her mind. She might as well stay. “You going to pick up that phone or does room service magically read your thoughts and deliver the meal of your choice at a set time?”
The sarcasm only made him laugh. It felt good, but it hardly went to relieve the tension pulsating within the room. “They might be able to read my thoughts, but not yours. I doubt if anyone can read yours.”
Her smile was deceptively soft. “I’m a very simple person.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” she informed him sweetly. “There, simple.”
Not by a long shot, he thought.
The room had gotten somewhat warmer since she’d entered it. It seemed odd to him that in all the time he’d spent away from home, he’d never found himself more than passingly attracted to anyone. Throughout his travels, he’d had plenty of opportunities to find willing companionship. But beyond the physical, there’d never been any sort of real gratification. Which kept things simple but at the same time continued to propagate the feeling of isolation he carried around within him.
A hoped-for breakthrough in his brother’s case seemed on the verge of happening.
Cole knew timing was everything, and whatever was in the making here couldn’t have found the least opportune time to manifest itself. He had absolutely no time to think of himself right now. Because things were at a critical junction, he’d even gone so far as to delegate his work to his assistants so that he could be free for the length of time it took to prove Eric’s innocence. But he had no time to pursue an urge that had materialized out of nowhere and might very well lead to the same place.
He picked up the telephone and ordered.
As she listened, Cole ordered Chicken Marsala, along with a bottle of wine, expensive by the sound of it.
“What,” she asked as he hung up, amusement dancing along her lips, “no Alfredo sauce?”
She had a nice smile, he caught himself thinking. Not that it mattered one way or another.
“I’ve had enough of that to last me for a while,” he said, turning away from the phone. “What does your gut instinct say?”
Her tongue threatened to seal itself up to the roof of her mouth again.
My gut instinct says I should get the hell out of here because the walls seemed to have moved in closer than they were a minute ago.
“About what?” she asked.
“The report.”
Idiot, she upbraided herself. Of course that’s what he meant.
“Seems straightforward enough.” She recited the highlights for him, although she had a feeling he was more familiar with them than she was. “Kathy Fallon was found dead in her apartment by a girlfriend who became worried that something might have happened to Kathy after she didn’t come in to work and didn’t answer her phone. She’d been stabbed.” Rayne paused for a moment, then continued. “According to neighbors, Eric and Kathy were heard arguing rather heatedly that evening. He said something to the effect that if he couldn’t have her, nobody could have her.”
Cole took a deep breath. He was already aware of that and how damning this testimony was for Eric, but it was still circumstantial. “That doesn’t automatically make him the killer. Eric said he left her alive.”
“We can’t find anyone to verify that,” she told him quietly, “and Eric’s fingerprints are all over the apartment. That, the restraining order Kathy swore out against him last month and the fact that he has no alibi for the time in question does put him at the head of the list.”
“He was at the party,” he reminded her.
She shook her head. She sympathized with what Cole seemed to be going through, because if it were one of her brothers facing being on trial for his life, she would be moving heaven and earth to try to find the flaw in the statement, the one piece that didn’t fit or would give way. But right now, there didn’t seem to be a tangible chink.
“Nobody remembers seeing Eric at the party after ten o’clock. The girl he was with supposedly said they were in one of the bedrooms and then she left. No one knows what happened to him after that. Kathy Fallon was killed close to midnight. By his own admission, Eric can’t remember what happened to him between shortly after he got to the party and waking up to the sound of the police banging on his door.” They might as well have everything out on the table at the same time. “And then there’s the little matter of that imprint from Eric’s ring on Kathy’s face.”
“I already told you, he said he gave it to her,” Cole said.
“We just have his word for it.”
He sighed, trying to gauge her tone. “So you think he did it?”
“No,” she said honestly, “but the jury’ll think he did it.”
For the second time he stopped prowling around the room. He needed to know. “What makes you think he didn’t?”
Cole’s eyes seemed to pin her in place. Even though she felt for what he was going through, Rayne resented being probed this way. “Are you trying to mess with my head?”
He blew out a breath. He felt as if he had his back against a wall. All he could do was pray that it wasn’t the wall in front of a firing squad.
“No, I’m trying to find what might be our best line of defense.”