Harlequin Intrigue, Box Set 2 of 2 (13 page)

“Son of a...” His breath whooshed out on a frustrated curse as the car veered around the corner and sped away. There wasn't even time to get to his truck and get turned around to pursue the suspect.

But he wasn't about to give up on finding the answers he needed and putting a stop to the danger escalating around Katie and Tyler. With a wave of reassurance to the people around him, Trent holstered his weapon and pulled out his phone.

Max's gruff voice answered. “It's early, junior, and I'm in bed with my wife. This better be good.”

“Apologies to Rosie. I need you to run a plate for me.”

The tenor of Max's tone changed instantly and Trent imagined his partner rolling out of bed with an urgency belying his burly stature. “You need backup? Everything okay?”

“No. But I'm not sure what I'm dealing with yet.” He strode back up the sidewalk “A guy just tried to pick the lock on Katie's apartment. He drove off after I chased him from the building.”

“Hell, I'd run, too, if I had a defensive tackle chasing me down,” Max teased, writing down the number Trent gave him.

His partner didn't even question that he was at Katie's this early in the morning. “The perp matched the general description of the guy taking pictures at the theater last night. I want to know why he was here.”

“I'm on it. You stay with her. I'll call as soon as I know anything.” He heard Max exchanging a kiss and muttering some kind of explanation to his wife. “Anything else?”

“Just get me the info, Max.”

“Will do.”

“Thanks, brother.”

Katie was waiting for him when he knocked on her door. Trent pushed inside and locked it behind him. Baggy plaid flannel draping over those generous breasts shouldn't trigger this instant desire in him, but he'd had a lot of practice ignoring those traitorous impulses around Katie. It was harder, though, to ignore the concern in those wide blue eyes, or to turn away from the wary frown that dimpled her forehead. Trent pulled off his glove and brushed her hair away from her worried expression. He'd barely felt a sample of her warm, velvety skin before she pulled away from his touch.

“Did you catch him?” she whispered, darting her eyes toward Tyler and Padre playing on the floor beside the Christmas tree.

Right. The rules. Although Trent wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and feel with his own two hands that she was safe, she was in touch-me-not mode this morning. He shook his head and unzipped his coat before crossing to check the lock on the kitchen window. “I got the plate number on his car, so hopefully it'll be enough to ID this guy.”

He peered outside to see the sun glinting off the snow and the world turning back to normal before heading through the apartment to ensure that all the access points were secure. A parade of mom, dog and boy followed him through the apartment.

“How did he get in?” Katie asked.

“It's not that hard if you bide your time and have a charming smile.”

“He conned his way in here?” She snapped her fingers and shooed Tyler and Padre across the hall when they reached her bedroom. “Clothes. Now, young man.” Departing on a three-toned sigh, Tyler grabbed Padre's collar and went into his room. Once she was certain her son was changing for school, Katie tugged on the sleeve of Trent's coat and pulled him into her bedroom. “You're going to scare Tyler if you keep this up.”

The fresh, flowery scent that was all Katie was stronger in here. But he conquered the urge to draw in a deep, savoring breath and crossed to the curtains to secure the window and fire escape outside. “The dog will distract him.”

“Not entirely. He's a sensitive kid.” He shivered at the touch of her fingers at the nape of his neck. But what he'd mistaken for a caress was pure practicality. She held up a palmful of road slush that was melting on his collar, then carried it over to the damp towel tossed across the bed from her morning shower to wipe her hand. “My God, you're a cold mess. You were out there all night, weren't you?”

“Most of it.”

“I thought I saw your truck. I couldn't sleep, either, after our...discussion.” She reached up and used the towel to dab at the moisture still beading on his neck and jaw. Ah, hell. Now,
that
was a caress. Goose bumps prickled across his skin in the wake of her touch, and her soft sigh teased something deeper inside. But she must have realized she'd crossed the very boundary she'd asked him to respect and quickly pulled away to stuff the towel into the hamper in her closet. Her shoulders came back with a forced resolve and she crossed to the desk she used as a home office. She picked up a stack of papers from the printer there.

“So I did some work, too. I compiled a list of Leland Asher's known associates and ran them through my database to see if there were any hits that matched up. I've been doing it backward—lining up the cases and then looking for connections between them to pop. This time I plugged in a bunch of suspect names we've been tossing around and ran them through the cold case data.”

Fine. They were safe for now. He couldn't do a damn thing until he heard back from Max. So he let her turn the conversation to work. “Did you find anything?”

Katie nodded and handed him the papers. “Isabel Asher—Leland's sister—was a sorority sister of Beverly Eisenbach's at, get this, Williams College.”

He thumbed through the stack. “The place where you and Tyler are doing the play?”

She pointed to the grainy printout from a twenty-five-year-old college annual. “The blonde in the front row is Isabel. Dr. Eisenbach is on the far left.”

“Eisenbach's the shrink who counseled Matt Asher and Stephen March as teens?” He recognized the younger images of the two women who'd each held a spot on the person of interest board at the squad's team meeting earlier in the week. “You think that's how Dr. Eisenbach and Leland met? Through Isabel?”

“You'd have to ask Bev Eisenbach to find that out.” She pointed to the date at the bottom of the photo. “But there's a reasonable chance that she knew the Asher family years before she counseled Leland's nephew. This is dated before he was even born. Maybe she's more than Leland's latest girlfriend. Having the previous acquaintance could be the reason he selected her to counsel his nephew, Matt. But if they've known each other since they were in their twenties, isn't it possible that their relationship has gone on for a lot longer than we realized? Maybe she counseled Leland for some reason—grief, stress, dealing with his sister's addiction? She might have confidential information on him that we could use in our investigation. Maybe he even confessed to some of his crimes, or the hits we suspect he paid for. Dr. Eisenbach's practice is one of the offices I've sent requests to for information. They confirmed that Matt Asher and Stephen March were former patients, but any requests for a complete patient list have been ignored.”

“This is good stuff, sunshine. Maybe even enough to ask the lieutenant for a warrant to get a look at Eisenbach's records.” Trent looked at another picture, this time of a young man with long blond hair or a blond wig, dressed in a Shakespearean costume. “What's this?” The actor's dark, beady eyes looked familiar. “Is this the Grim Reaper?”

Katie hugged her arms in front of her, clearly feeling a little less comfortable with this piece of information. “Francis Sergel about twenty-five years ago. I found him through my facial recognition software.”

Trent squinted the name beneath the theater program picture into focus. “Frank Reinhardt?”

“Sergel must be a stage name he adopted. Looks like he's playing Hamlet.”

Trent couldn't imagine that walking, talking skeleton of a man playing anything heroic. “He has ties to Asher?”

“Lieutenant Rafferty-Taylor didn't ask me to pursue him as a suspect, so I didn't exactly have permission to dig through criminal records. But after the last few nights at the theater, I wanted to know if I should be worried about him.”

Was that what had her squirming inside her own skin—that she'd broken a procedure rule? “I'll request it.”

She offered up a wan smile. “Thanks.”

“Not a problem. I didn't like Sergel or that Doug Price, either. I want to make sure they check out.” He flipped to the next page and skimmed the information. “So Sergel, er, Reinhardt, has a record?”

“Minor stuff. Nothing violent. Possession of narcotics. A DUI. He never went to prison. It was all time served and community service. And court-ordered NA meetings.”

“Like Stephen March.” And Isabel Asher. And any of a number of pushers and addicts who'd worked for and bought from and crossed paths with Asher's criminal empire.

“A decade earlier, but yes.” She sank onto the edge of her bed as if her legs had grown too weak to hold her. She'd made the same realization he had. The team's idea of a
Strangers on a Train
setup behind several of their unsolved crimes could no longer be discounted as a mere theory. “It's a small world, isn't it?”

Trent knelt on the carpet in front of her, relieved to see that she didn't swat away a comforting touch when he rested his hand on her knee. “Cold cases are built on circumstantial evidence more than anything else. There are an awful lot of circumstances that your research has linked together. Now we just have to prove that Leland Asher is behind it all.”

Her gaze met his and she tried to smile. “Good luck with that.”

“Look, I'm going to take this information and run with it. I'll get Sergel and Price and Dr. Eisenbach and maybe even Leland himself all in for interviews. We'll get the doctor's patient list and see if she counseled Leland. We'll make a case against Asher and put him back in prison where he belongs.” He stroked his fingers over the gray wool of her slacks. “But my immediate concern is those threats you've been getting. I've got a call in to Max to see if he can run down the name of that guy who got away. You didn't recognize him, did you?”

“From the back? Running away?”

“He was wearing dress shoes instead of snow boots. Like the photographer you saw at the theater.”

The telephone on her bedside table rang and she jumped. Trent squeezed her knee before standing up and giving her the space to move around the bed and answer it. “So that's why he looked at my driver's license.”

“If it's the same guy who defaced your laptop, yeah. It'd be easy to find you.” Trent caught her by the hand before she left him entirely. “I don't suppose I could talk you into packing a bag for you and Tyler and moving in with me until this all blows over? It's hell sleeping in my truck, and your couch isn't big enough.”

He needed her to read between the lines of his teasing tone and understand he was drop-dead serious
. I'm not going anywhere and I'm not leaving you alone.

Her fingers trembled for a moment inside his grasp before she pulled away and picked up the cordless receiver from its cradle. “Hello? Yes?” Trent watched the color drain from her face. “Who is this? Why are you doing this to me?”

“Katie?”

She punched the button to put the call on speakerphone and held the receiver between them as an electronically altered voice filled the room. “—want to hurt you, Katie Lee. But you've left me no choice. I know what scares you. The dark. A syringe. Your murdering father. Losing your child.”

Trent dropped the photos Katie had printed out and grabbed the phone from her hand. “This is the police. Who is this?”

He gritted his teeth at the answering laugh. “You were warned. Even your boyfriend's not going to be able to save you now.”

The click of the disconnecting call echoed across the room. Trent hung up her phone and pulled his from his coat. He'd call Max again to find out who'd just dialed her number. Although he'd bet good money this wraith stalking Katie had used an untraceable cell.

Katie sank to her knees, crawling across the carpet to pick up the photos. “He's not going to hurt you, sunshine. I won't let him.” His partner picked up. “Max?”

But Katie was more focused on some distant point inside her head than in any kind of shock. She sat back on her heels and crumpled the papers in her fist. “It's these.”

“Pictures? Printouts? The mess I made?” After relaying the message to Max, Trent picked up the rest of the papers and tried to understand the wheels turning in her head. “You're not talking to me, woman. What do you mean?”

She blinked and brought those cornflower-blue eyes into focus on him. “It's the research I'm doing on these cold case files.” She braced her hand on his shoulder to stand and hurried to her computer. Trent followed, anxious to catch up on her train of thought. “I've opened up the wrong can of worms somewhere—I've breached some piece of information I shouldn't have. That's what he wants me to stop.”

Trent looked over her shoulder as she booted up her computer, plugged in her portable hard drive and turned on the hot-spot security device. “The brass isn't about to stop a criminal investigation. Even if the lieutenant takes you off the case and reassigns you, we'll still be going after Asher. Are you sure?”

“Every time I ping another database, every time I send an email request—that's when he contacts me.” With the equipment in place, she tucked her hair behind her ears and went to work. “I need to run a full system diagnostic. It may be on my computer at work, too. He's mirroring me.”

“What does that mean?”

“Somebody's tapped into my computer. Or maybe the portable hard drive. Even if he's not copying my data, he can see what sites I go to. He's been tracking every movement I make online.”

“How can you tell?”

She'd gotten into the belly of the programming now and was scrolling through code. “Every time I get a little more information about Leland Asher, every time I discover another piece of the puzzle that can build our case against him, something happens. That man at the theater. Vandalizing my laptop. He's tracking me somehow. Either visually or online.”