“The lady you were with last night.” Ignoring the last part of Michael’s speech, the cop looked at him intently. “We both know what women can be like. She must have pissed you off pretty good. What’d she do?”
Michael’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Oh, come on, now, Mr. Garland. We both know you do. Why don’t you just tell me what happened? Whatever the reason was, if you tell me about it now, I guarantee things’ll go a lot easier for you.”
A commotion in the hall caused both men to glance in the direction of the open door. A split second later, a woman burst through it, crying, “Michael! Oh, my God, Michael, what did you do?”
The woman was in maybe her mid-twenties, with a pretty, sulky-looking face enhanced by lots of mascara and bold scarlet lips, a riot of long black hair, and a va-va-voom figure in tiny shorts and a low-cut tank top.
“Jasmine!” Michael sat straight up as she flew toward him, her high-heeled sandals clattering on the industrial gray floor. Before she could reach him, the cop behind the table leaped to his feet and interposed himself between her and Michael, and another cop barreled through the door to catch her by the arm.
“Sorry about that! She got away from me—” the second cop said to the first as, drowning out the rest of what he had to say, Jasmine screamed at Michael, “You fucked another woman? We’re broken up one day and already you’re out fucking another woman? You …” The string of expletives she let loose with made the florid-faced cop whose chest she had run into, and who was at that moment backing her toward the door while the other cop pulled her in that direction with a hand on her arm and another on her waist, wince.
Charlie couldn’t see Michael—the cops and the woman blocked the camera’s view of him—but in the background she could hear him growl, “Jesus H. Christ, what the hell did you bring
her
here for?”
“Miss Lipsitz! You can’t talk to him!” said the cop, urgently pulling Jasmine out the door.
Jasmine strained to get away. Every bit of her focus was on Michael. “You fucked her and then you killed her! That’s what they’re saying! Some bitch you picked up in a bar! Is it true?”
Although the camera’s view of him was still blocked by the beefy cop who was shoving Jasmine out the door, Michael could be heard saying, “What the hell?”
Jasmine was once again screaming expletives as she was forced into the hallway and the door was shut on her.
The camera had an unimpeded view of Michael then. He was staring at the beefy cop, who’d turned back to look at him.
“That girl I was with last night … she’s dead?” Michael asked slowly.
The cop didn’t say anything. But even Charlie, watching grainy footage on a laptop, could read the answer in his body language:
yes.
“I want a lawyer,” Michael said. And that was it. The footage ended, and the screen went blank.
“Like I said, after that it went downhill fast,” real, live (well, dead) Michael said. Charlie looked at him without really seeing him: she was too preoccupied with analyzing what she had just viewed. The news that Candace Hartnell was dead had definitely seemed to come as a surprise to him. Could he have been acting? Her best judgment said
no,
but she realized that she couldn’t be sure. The psychology of serial killers was complex enough to preclude her being able to count on the veracity of his reaction, and her connection to him was too personal to allow her to count on her own reading of it.
“So that was Jasmine,” she mused, and only realized that she’d said it aloud when Michael grinned at her. Immediately she wanted to bite her tongue.
“She was cute,” he said. “And even fun for a while. Not the brightest, but then, I didn’t keep her around to perform brain surgery on me.”
“I bet.” Charlie couldn’t help it. That bit of sarcasm simply came out.
His grin widened. “Like I said, you got no reason to be jealous of Jasmine, babe.”
Charlie gave him a look, decided she wasn’t going there, and concentrated again on the evidence: the watch was the key.
She said as much, then added, “If that watch they found at the crime scene wasn’t yours, and if that could be proved because it didn’t have the engraving on the back that yours did, wasn’t there anybody who could testify that it
wasn’t
your watch because
your
watch had
Semper Fi
on the back of it?”
His eyes returned to the ceiling. “Everybody who could testify to that is dead.”
“Everybody?”
“Yup.”
Clearly, Charlie saw, she was touching on what was, for him, a sensitive area. Or else he was smart enough—and he
was
smart enough—to know that he could get around her by pretending it was a sensitive area. That she was so
softhearted
she wouldn’t probe further if she thought the questions she was asking caused him pain.
Yeah, to hell with that.
“You want to elucidate on that a little?” she asked.
He smiled faintly as his gaze slanted her way. “You trying to confuse me with that big word?”
That didn’t fly, either. “Michael.”
The smile vanished. “The watch was given to me by members of my unit, who were killed in Afghanistan, all right? They’re the only ones who knew what was engraved on it.”
From the sudden tension in his jaw, she could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. And, damn it, she discovered that she
was
too softhearted to push him to go to a place that was obviously (unless he was very, very good at faking it, which was possible) hurtful to him.
Kicking herself for her own lack of toughness, she moved on to something else that had occurred to her. But now that it had, it loomed large as a mountain right smack in the middle of the winding road she was traveling on the way to maybe actually believing him.
Her eyes skewered him. Her tone sharpened until it teetered on the edge of being accusing. “So tell me this: if you didn’t kill those women, then how did you wind up in Spookville when you died?”
His expression turned grim. “Babe, I never said I didn’t deserve to be where I was. What I said was, I didn’t kill those women.”
Charlie frowned at him. “So what in the world did you do to deserve Spookville?”
He shook his head at her. “I’m done talking about what I did or didn’t do. The only reason I even told you any of this is because it pisses me off when every now and then you start looking at me like you think I’m Jack the Ripper. What it comes down to at this point is, either you believe me or you don’t. Your call.”
He sat up, and she was surprised at how physically close that brought him. As big as he was, he took up way more than his fair share of space on the bed, and her field of vision was suddenly full of his broad shoulders and wide chest. Their arms almost brushed, and she could see the muscles flexing in his, and in his torso beneath his shirt. They were both sitting on top of the covers, but she had her legs tucked beneath her and her laptop in her lap while his long legs in their jeans and boots stretched out almost to the end of the bed. He looked as solid and alive as it was possible for a man to look. Charlie was conscious of her idiot heart speeding up again just from his proximity.
“So?” he said, and she knew what he was asking.
She had to look up to meet his eyes. As she did, they darkened, and his mouth firmed. Searching his hard, handsome face, she realized that she had to consider the possibility that her original diagnosis of him might have been influenced by the fact that she had known he was a convicted serial killer. If she turned the thing on its head, if at the time of diagnosis she had been introduced to him as a normal, law-abiding citizen, would she have concluded that he was a charismatic psychopath capable of the ultimate in horrific violence?
Or would she simply have seen a gorgeous guy with a charming smile?
At this point, it was impossible to know.
“Okay, I believe you,” she told him.
His eyes slid over her face. One side of his mouth quirked up in a wry half-smile. “With reservations, huh?”
He’d said he could read her face like a neon sign: here was more proof of it. She was still mentally sorting through the factors for and against his version of what had happened with Candace Hartnell.
“I haven’t seen any overwhelming evidence that you’re innocent,” she told him honestly. “On the other hand, I’ve seen enough to make me think you could be.”
“Your faith in me is staggering, babe.” The dryness in his voice made her smile a little.
“What we need to do is find somebody who is willing to testify that this watch”—her voice was brisk with determination as she touched the watch on her arm—“is yours. Somebody who knows about the engraving on the back.”
He smiled at her, a slow and ultimately dazzling smile that made her breath catch and her toes curl. Nobody, but nobody, looked like Michael when he smiled like that.
“There goes that savior complex of yours kicking into gear again,” he said. “We don’t need to do shit. There’s no point in it. I’m dead, remember? Whether I’m innocent or not doesn’t matter a damn anymore to anybody but you.”
“But …” Knowing that he was right defeated her.
“You got to go with your gut here, babe. What’s it gonna be?”
Looking into those sky blue eyes, Charlie silently acknowledged that for quite some time she had been having trouble picturing him as a merciless slaughterer of young women. It just didn’t fit with the man she was getting to know, she felt, pretty well.
But there was no way to be sure. All she could do was go with—not so much her gut, she realized, as her heart.
Her stupid, soft, and way-too-vulnerable heart.
“I thought so,” he said with satisfaction, and she knew he had once again successfully read on her face what she was thinking.
“Fine,” she told him. “I believe you.”
“You could sound happier about it.”
“I probably could.” If her response was tart, it was because she was disgusted with herself for being such a sucker where he was concerned. No good could come of it. She knew that, and was a sucker for him anyway.
As he watched her face his eyes darkened. Then his head bent, and she felt a shivery little thrill of anticipation when she realized that he was going to kiss her.
Despite all the reasons why she shouldn’t, she closed her eyes and tilted her lips up to meet his. Meanwhile, her heart pounded and her pulse raced and her stomach fluttered like a thousand butterflies were taking wing in it.
Then her lips got hit with the slightest of electric tingles and he said
“Fuck”
and her eyes flew open.
To find his gorgeous blue eyes mere inches away, blazing down into hers.
In a flash she realized what had happened: for a moment there, they had both forgotten that he was nothing more than a spirit with no physical substance whatsoever. He’d bent his head to kiss her like he’d thought he actually could, and she’d lifted her mouth to his like it was really going to happen.
“Yeah,” he said in grim acknowledgment of reality, and got off the bed. He was already on the move when he told her over his shoulder, “I’m going for a walk.”
“You can’t,” she began in instant warning, meaning to remind him that they were tethered.
“I won’t forget that I’m on a fifty-foot leash. If nothing else, I’ll probably pace back and forth in front of your door. You should go to sleep.” His eyes slid over her, and then a quick, wry smile touched his mouth.”You look sexy as hell in that pretty nightgown, by the way. Not being able to do a thing about it is driving me out of my mind.”
That was when she realized that ever since she’d clicked on the bedside lamp he’d gotten an up-close and personal view of her slinky little gown with its loose, cleavage baring neckline that gave the impression of being barely held up by satiny spaghetti straps. A quick glance down at herself confirmed it: the shimmery peach slip clung to her full breasts and lay whisper close to her narrow waist and flat stomach, leaving little to the imagination before, lower down, her laptop obstructed his view of her slender legs. Her nipples stood up in taut supplication beneath the thin silk. He had to know, as she did, that they were like that because of him.
“I want you like hell,” he said, his tone making it almost a throwaway line.
Then he strode on out of view.
Charlie just sat there looking after him. Her lips still tingled in anticipation of that thwarted kiss. Her heart still pounded. Her pulse still raced. Deep inside, her body pulsed and burned. But even though she was now almost entirely convinced of his innocence, the hard truth was that the potent attraction that sizzled between them was still as impossible as it ever had been. If he was innocent—and she realized that on some deep, cellular level she had felt he was almost since he had died—that was terrifying in a whole new way. Because it meant there was now nothing to stop her from falling absolutely head over heels in love with him. Except for the fact that the only way falling in love with Michael could end was in her own heartbreak.