He reached over to caress her face. “I know that.”
His touch sent a burst of longing sizzling through her, but she tamped it down. “Can you be patient with me?”
“I spent years wishing for another chance with you, Sam. I’m not about to bail just because it isn’t going to be easy.”
She released a deep sigh of relief. “Good.”
“But after this case is closed…”
“I’ll be right there with you.”
“What we had six years ago is still there,” he said, gazing into her eyes.
“So it seems.”
“Whatever it is, I’ve never had it with anyone else.”
“I haven’t either. I was so sad when you didn’t call. I couldn’t believe I’d been so wrong about you.”
“
Ugh
. That makes me furious. When I think about what we might’ve had, all these years…”
“Let me close this case,” she said, her voice hoarse and tense. “The minute I close this case…”
Nick seemed to be resisting the urge to haul her into his arms. “Samantha?”
Surprisingly, the dreaded name didn’t sound so bad coming from him. “Hmm?”
“We steamed up the windows.”
“And we didn’t even do anything!”
“Yet,” he said, his voice full of promise.
Finding him harder to resist with every passing second, she shifted the car into drive and forced herself to focus on the road.
Chapter 13
Sam left Nick at the congressional parking lot, and timed her drive across the city to the Watergate. At that hour of the night, traffic was light but an accident on Independence Avenue screwed up her timing. She’d have to try again tomorrow night to determine whether Christina Billings would’ve had enough time to drive across the city, commit murder, and drive back with a stop to pick up Chinese food in twenty-eight minutes.
Reaching for her cell phone, she called to check on the search of Billings’s car.
“I was just going to call you,” Detective Tommy “Gonzo” Gonzales said. “We got a hit for blood on the front seat.”
“I knew it!” Sam cried. “I’ll bet she wrapped up her coat and left it on the seat. The blood soaked through!”
“Wait,” Gonzo said. “Before you get too excited, she said she cut her hand scraping ice off her car two weeks ago and had to get three stitches. She has a raw-looking pink scar on her right hand and produced the form from the E.R. with wound care instructions. We’re checking the blood anyway, but I’ll bet a month’s pay it’s going to be hers. She willingly gave us a sample.”
“
Son of a bitch
. We can’t catch a single break in this one.”
“We’ve narrowed down Billings’s list of the senator’s recent girlfriends from six to two. The other four could prove they weren’t in the city that night.”
Sam added visits to the two remaining Barbies to her ever-growing to-do list for the morning. “Do me a favor and set up some plain-clothes coverage for the senator’s wake. Make sure you coordinate with Virginia State Police and Richmond.”
“Sure thing. Do you want observation and video or just observation?”
“Let’s tape it. Make sure the officers you send have the photos of the senator’s family and girlfriends, so they’ll know who to watch for.”
“I’m on it.”
“Thanks for the good work, Gonzo.”
“You got it. Try to get some sleep tonight, Sam.”
“Yeah, sure.”
As she sat in the tangle of cars held up by the wreck, Sam banged her fist on the wheel in frustration that came from multiple sources. She couldn’t stop thinking about Nick and how understanding he’d been when she put their fledgling relationship on hold. How often did she allow herself to lean on someone? Never. However, she couldn’t lean on someone who was a material witness in the homicide case she was investigating. As much as she wanted to, she just couldn’t.
She edged the car forward and finally cleared the accident. When she arrived at the Watergate, Nick was waiting for her in his black BMW.
“What took so long?” he asked as he stepped out of the car.
“Accident on Independence.”
“You should’ve taken Constitution.”
“Well, I know that
now
. Nice ride,” she said, admiring the gleaming Beamer. “The taxpayers take good care of you.”
“I have few vices,” he said with a grin as he slid an arm around her. “Cars are one of them.”
She scooted out from under his arm before they entered the lobby. “No PDA,” she growled. Flashing her shield to the officer at the security desk, she gestured to the bank of elevators. “We’re taking another look at the senator’s apartment.”
The officer nodded and waved them through.
They rode to the sixth floor where the door to John’s apartment was blocked by yellow crime scene tape. Sam plugged in the code to the police lock and pushed open the door. Lifting the yellow tape, she encouraged Nick to go in ahead of her.
She heard his deep inhale and watched his broad shoulders stoop as the memories came flooding back to him. Placing her hand on his arm, she stopped him. “You don’t have to be here. I can get the clothes for you.”
“No,” he said softly. “I can do it.”
“Take a minute. I’m going to wander.”
Sam walked through the luxurious apartment where a light sheen of fingerprint dust remained. Picking up knickknacks, opening drawers and checking behind the television, she looked for anything that might have been missed the first time through. She had no doubt the place had been put together by a decorator—probably when the senior Senator O’Connor lived there. It was odd, really, how little of John O’Connor could be found in the apartment.
In the senator’s bedroom, the bed linens had been stripped and sent off for DNA analysis. A single hair could have blown the case wide open, but all the fingerprints, fibers and DNA were John’s. Since the apartment had not yet been cleaned, blood stained the wall behind the bed as well as the beige carpeting, and coagulated on the bedside table. The blow to the jugular would’ve been messy. Blood would have burst like a geyser from the wound, soaking the killer.
Sam stood at the foot of the bed and let her mind wander. Had he fallen asleep sitting up? Or had he sat up in surprise when the killer appeared? Obviously, he’d been naked in bed. Had he thought he was going to have sex with the woman who appeared in his bedroom? Is that how she gained easy access to his privates? Sam was absolutely convinced it was someone he knew well, which is why he hadn’t had much of a reaction to finding her in his apartment.
“What’s going on in that head of yours, Sergeant?” Nick asked from behind her.
“He was asleep,” Sam said, her eyes fixed on the headboard where the gaping hole in the beige silk upholstery was a glaring reminder of what had happened there almost forty-eight hours ago. “Dozing. The TV was probably on.”
“It wasn’t on when I got here.”
“She could’ve shut it off. Whoever it was, she was someone he wasn’t surprised to see.”
“She?”
“They were lovers.” Sam spoke in a monotone as the scene played itself out in her imagination.
“Did he let her in?”
Sam shook her head. “She was waiting for him and took him by surprise. She had the knife behind her back. Maybe she was naked, too, which is why there’s no one on the security tapes leaving with blood on their clothes. He thought he was going to get lucky, and that’s how she managed to get a hold of his penis. By the time he became aware of the knife, she had already severed it. The pain would’ve been monstrous. He probably lost consciousness. If he came to before she killed him, he would have asked why. Maybe she told him, maybe she let him wonder.”
“Would she have been strong enough to get a knife through his neck with one shot?”
“Good question. And you’re right—it would’ve taken a tremendous blow to go all the way through his neck and lodge in the headboard. She would’ve been enraged by something he did or failed to do. Rage and adrenaline breeds strength. It could’ve been a promise he made and didn’t deliver on or maybe she caught him with another woman. People have killed over less. When she was done, she took a shower to get rid of the blood that would’ve been all over her. Then she cleaned the bathroom and scrubbed it so well there wasn’t so much as a hair on the floor. The water in the tub had dried by the time he was found, so we can only speculate that she showered. But none of the towels had been used. If she used one, she took it with her. Before she left, she might’ve taken a long last look at him. She was filled with regret that he couldn’t be what she needed him to be, but at the same time she was angry with him for making her do this.”
“You’re good, Sam,” Nick said, his tone reverent.
As if she had been in a trance, Sam looked up at him. “What?”
“The way you describe it… If I were a juror, I’d convict.”
“All I have to do now is prove it and figure out who did it.”
“You will.” He moved to the closet, opened the doors and contemplated the row of dark suits, dress shirts in white, various shades of blue and some with pinstripes. There were easily a hundred ties to choose from.
Peeking into dresser drawers, Sam asked, “Did he ever wear anything besides suits? Where’re the jeans? The sweats?”
“He didn’t keep a lot of that stuff here.”
“Where else would it be?”
“At his place in Leesburg.”
“He has a second home?”
Nick nodded. “A cabin near his parents’ property. We both use it as a retreat from the insanity of Washington.”
“Why didn’t you say anything about it the other day?”
“To be honest, it never occurred to me. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking clearly then. I’m still not. Between what happened to John and seeing you again…”
“Take me there.”
“Now?”
She nodded.
“It’s almost midnight. You’ve been at it for eighteen hours. I can take you tomorrow.”
Shaking her head, she said, “I won’t have time tomorrow. If you drive, I’ll nap in the car—if you can stay awake that is.”
“I’m fine. I do my best work from midnight to three a.m.”
His comment was rife with double meaning that Sam refused to acknowledge. Her face, however, heated with embarrassment as she helped him decide on a dark navy suit, pale blue silk dress shirt and a tie decorated with small American flags. They unearthed a garment bag, and Sam zipped it over the suit.
“Underwear?” she asked.
“He didn’t wear it in life.”
“How in the hell do you know that?”
Nick laughed. “We were at a luncheon with the Daughters of the American Revolution a year or so ago, and everyone was starting to leave when one of the blue hairs came to tell me the senator needed me at the head table. I went into the room, and he was sitting all by himself.”
“How come?”
“Apparently, he’d managed to split his pants and was in need of an exit strategy.”
Sam laughed at the picture he painted. “Let me guess—he was in commando mode?”
“You got it. So I found him an overcoat—not an easy feat in July, I might add—and got him out of there with his pride intact.”
“Where did that fall in your job description?”
“Under ‘other duties as assigned,’” he said with a sad smile that tugged at her heart.
“All right then. No underwear. Shoes?”
“Would you want to spend eternity with your feet encased in wingtips? The tie will be bad enough. I’m sure I’ll hear plenty about that when we meet up again in the afterlife.” He reached for her hand and linked their fingers. “Thank you for helping me with this.”
Flustered, she extracted her hand and jammed it in her pocket. “It’s no problem.”
“Is choosing clothes for the deceased part of
your
job description?”
“This is definitely a first.”
On their way out of John’s bedroom, Nick looked at her in a way that reminded Sam of what he wanted from her. A burst of yearning took her by surprise. Sam wasn’t a woman who yearned, especially for a man. She was focused, efficient, dedicated to her work and her family, hard nosed when she needed to be, and independent—fiercely and completely independent. So it should have been unsettling to want a man as much as she wanted Nick.
Truth be told, she had fantasized about him for years after the night they spent together. She had followed Senator O’Connor’s career and watched hours of congressional coverage in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the senator’s trusted aide. But only rarely had she seen Nick. He apparently kept a much lower profile than his illustrious boss.
In the parking lot, he held the passenger door of his car for her.
She slid into the buttery soft leather seat and sighed with contentment. When he turned the car on, she quickly discovered the seats were heated and felt like she’d gone straight to heaven. “This car suits you.”
“You think so?”
“Uh huh. It’s classy but not showy.”
“Is that a compliment, Samantha?”
She shrugged.
He reached for her hand as they headed out of the city. When she tried to resist, he held on tighter. “No one but us, babe.”
“There’s no tablecloth to hide under.”
He flashed that irresistible grin and laced his fingers through hers. “Give me just this much, will you?”
Since he’d asked so nicely and it really wasn’t much, she didn’t argue with him even if the simple feel of his hand wrapped around hers set her heart to galloping and put her hormones on full alert. Guilt was mixed in there, too. She had no business spending this much time with him or wanting him so fiercely. But since it was dark and she was tired and no one was looking, rather than push him away, she tightened her grip on his hand.
Chapter 14
Sam hadn’t expected to sleep. But the combined lull of the moving car, the heated seats, Nick’s hand wrapped companionably around hers…
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. We’re here.”
Coming to, Sam looked out at the vast darkness and was able to make out the shape of a cabin in front of the car. “Let’s get to it.”
The rush of frigid air slapped at Sam’s face. She followed Nick up the gravel path to the door and stood back while he used his key in the lock.
Inside, he flipped on lights. Sam blinked a comfortable living area into focus. Big, welcoming sofas, a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, overflowing bookshelves on either side of the stone fireplace, framed family photos and a couple of trophies. Here, at last, was Senator John Thomas O’Connor.
She shrugged off her coat, pushed up the sleeves of her sweater, tugged the clip from her hair and got to work. Two hours later, she had discovered that John loved Hemingway, Shakespeare, Patterson and Grisham. His musical taste ran the gamut from Melencamp to Springsteen, Vivaldi to Bach. She had sifted through photo albums, yearbooks and a file cabinet that seemed to have no rhyme or reason to anyone other than its owner.
She perused a series of essays John wrote for his senior project at Harvard, detailing the roles of government and the governed. The essays were bound into a small navy blue volume with smart gold embossing.
“He was proud of that,” Nick said from the doorway to the office.
Startled, she glanced up at him. She had
almost
forgotten he was there.
“His father had the book made and gave it to everyone who was anyone.” Nick stepped into the room and handed her a steaming mug.
“
Oh
, is that hot chocolate?” she asked, soaking in the mouthwatering aroma.
“I figured it was too late for coffee.” He had removed his suit coat and released the top buttons on his dress shirt. Her eyes fixated on a dark tuft of chest hair.
“You figured right. Fat free, calorie free, I hope.” Swirling her tongue over the dollop of whipped cream on top, she took a moment to appreciate the taste. Looking up at him again, she found his hazel eyes locked on her. “What?” she asked, her voice shakier than she intended it to be.
“It’s just…you…and whipped cream. It’s giving me ideas.”
She swallowed, hard.
“I like your hair down like that,” he added.
Choosing to ignore the comments and the flush of heat that went rippling through her body, she returned her attention to the book John had dedicated to his father. A photo slid out from between the pages and fell to the floor. Sam put her mug on the desk and leaned over to retrieve the picture of a strapping blond boy of about sixteen in a football uniform.
“What’ve you got there?” Nick asked.
“Looks like a photo of John when he was in high school.” She turned it over to find the initials “TJO” and a date from four years earlier. “Oh. It’s not him. Who’s TJO?”
Nick took the photo from her, studied the likeness, and then turned it over. “I have no idea, but he could
be
John when I first met him.”
“Did he have a son, Nick?” She thought of Patricia Donaldson and the three-thousand-dollar-a-month payments.
“Of course not.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I’m positive,” he said hotly. “I’ve known him since he was eighteen. If he had a son, I’d know it.”
“Well, if that’s not his son, whoever he is, he bears a striking resemblance to John.” Sam tucked the photo into her bag with plans to ask the senator’s parents about it in the morning. “He had quite a thing for Spider-Man, huh?” She gestured to the shelves in the corner that housed John’s extensive stash of Spiderman collectibles.
Nick smiled. “He was obsessed.”
She picked up a carved placard from the desk that bore Spider-Man’s signature saying, With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. Studying it for a long moment, she glanced at Nick. “Did he believe this?”
“Very much so. Despite his sometimes lackadaisical approach to his job, he took his responsibilities as seriously as he was able to.”
“But not as seriously as you would have.”
“Let’s just say if our roles had been reversed, I would’ve done a lot of things differently.”
“Have you ever wanted to be the one in the corner office?”
“God no,” he said with a guffaw. “I work much better as the guy behind the guy.” He seemed to sober when he remembered he had lost his guy when John died.
“With his parents’ okay, I’d like to have a team go through here more methodically tomorrow.” She stretched and got up. “I’m running out of gas after twenty hours.”
“I’m guessing you’ll want to talk to his parents about that photo,” Nick said, “so why don’t we crash here and go see them in the morning?”
Her eyes darted up to meet his. “I’m not sleeping with you.”
“I’m not asking you to,” he said with a sexy smile. “There’s a guestroom I use when I’m here. I’ll take John’s room.”
Sam ran it around in her mind as she finished her hot chocolate. Technically, the cabin wasn’t a crime scene, so she didn’t have an issue there. She was exhausted, he didn’t look much better, and she
could
knock a few things off her to-do list in the morning if she stayed in Leesburg, including another discussion with Terry O’Connor if he was available.
“All right,” she said, even though she would’ve preferred separate hotel rooms, but hotels were in short supply in that corner of the county. She got up to follow Nick down the hallway to the bedrooms.
“Bathroom’s in there,” he pointed. In the guestroom, he rooted through an antique chest of drawers and pulled out a large T-shirt. “One of mine if you want something to sleep in. There’re extra toothbrushes and anything else you might need in the bathroom closet.”
“Thanks,” she said, embarrassed and shy all of a sudden—two emotions she rarely experienced.
He slid a hand around her neck to draw her in close to him. For a long, breathless moment he just looked at her before he kissed her forehead. “I’ll see you in the morning. Holler if you need anything.”
Devastated by the simple kiss, she watched him cross the hall, her heart pounding and her hands damp. She hated being off balance and out of kilter, which of course was why he had done it. Feeling defiant, she used the bathroom and then left the shirt he had given her on the bed as she stripped out of her clothes and slid naked between the cool sheets.
Less than a minute later, she was out cold.
“Sam. Honey, wake up. You’re dreaming.”
Sam could hear him but couldn’t seem to force her eyes open.
“Babe.”
Her eyes fluttered open to find Nick sitting on the bed.
When he brushed the hair back from her face, she realized she was sweating and her heart was racing.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Mmm, sorry.” It occurred to her that she must’ve been loud if she had woken him. She glanced at him, noticing he wore only a pair of sweats, and let her eyes take a slow journey over his muscular chest.
“It was a doozy, huh? The dream?”
“I don’t know. I never remember the details, just the fear.” She rubbed a weary hand over her cheek and wished for a glass of water. “Did I…um…say anything?”
He replaced the hand she had on her face with his own. “You kept saying, ‘Cease fire, hold your fire.’”
“Shit,” she said with a deep sigh.
He stretched out next to her on top of the comforter and settled her head on his shoulder. “It was a traumatic thing, Sam, but it wasn’t your fault.”
Steeped in the masculine scent of citrus and spice, she closed her eyes against the rush of emotion and absorbed the comfort he offered. Just for a minute. His chest hair brushed against her face, making her want him so fiercely. “If only I could forgive myself as easily as you’ve forgiven me.”
He brought her closer to him.
“Um, Nick?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m kind of naked under here.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
As all the reasons this was a bad idea came crashing down on her, she attempted to struggle out of his embrace. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t have this. I can’t have you.”
“Yes, you can.”
Her face still pressed to his chest, Sam gave herself another second to wallow in the scent that she’d never forgotten. “Not here. Not now.”
He released a deep, ragged breath. “I missed you, Sam. I thought about you, about that night, so often.”
“I did, too,” she said, her eyes closed tight against the onslaught of emotions she’d only felt this acutely once before.
“I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. If you’re in the room, I want you.”
“I seem to have the same problem.”
“We’ve got a few hours until daybreak. Would it be okay if I just held you until then?”
“I’d love nothing more, but it’s too tempting.
You’re
too tempting.”
Sighing again, he released her and sat up. He leaned down to press a soft kiss to her lips. “See you in the morning.”
Sam watched him go, knowing she’d never get back to sleep with every cell in her body on fire for him.