Warrior's Angel (The Lost Angels Book 4) (10 page)

Chapter Nine

Rhiannon almost slipped on a puddle on the bathroom floor trying to get to the phone on time. She slammed the bathroom door open, scrambled across the hall to the living room, and grabbed it out of the bowl she normally tossed it into along with her apartment key and lip balm. Breathless and dripping, she checked to see who was calling.

The readout said only, “Alex.”
Rhiannon immediately attempted to answer it by swiping her finger across the green bar, but it didn’t work. The carpet beneath her began to get damp from the drops of water sliding off her body. She tried to answer the phone again before she realized her finger was too wet for it to be picked up properly by the phone’s sensors.

She swore softly and
dried her finger on the edge of her towel, but not before the call ended.

Now she swore a little more loudly, and her grip on the phone tightened to the point of frustrated pain. But then it rang ag
ain, and this time, she managed to answer it immediately.

“Miss Dante, are you well?” asked a very serious voice. Alex, or Alexander, as Mr. Verdigri called him, was one of her employer’s most trusted
bodyguards, an enormous, superhuman, no-nonsense ex-Navy Seal whom Rhiannon had never once seen cracking a smile. However, the two had a silent rapport, which Rhiannon could only assume existed solely because of her own rather superhuman abilities. Most likely, a Navy Seal could appreciate a woman who could take care of herself.

It didn’t stop him from doing his job, however.
She’d been in the apartment three full days, and he’d been watching over her the entire time.

“I’m fine. I’m just… indisposed.”

Alex paused, no doubt digesting that and making the shower connection, before he continued. “You are about to have company. There’s an NYPD officer crossing the street to your building right now. He’s coming from an unmarked car.”

A thrum of fear went through Rhiannon.
There was no point in asking how Alex knew it was a cop. Alex was good at his job. “How do you know he’s coming to see me?” she asked instead. There were thirty-one apartments in the complex, after all.

“I can tell.”

Rhiannon squeezed her eyes shut and tried to run a hand through her hair before she remembered it was soaking wet and her fingers caught on a knot. She winced, yanked her hand back out, thanked Alex for the warning, and hung up the phone.

Then she ran
to the bedroom. She had managed to pull on a pair of jeans without underwear and a t-shirt without a bra and was in the midst of putting her hair up in her towel when the knock came at the door. It was firm, but polite. If you could tell such a thing from a knock.

Rhian
non experienced a full range of frustration at the sound. She hadn’t been able to put on lotion or any garments, or even completely dry off, and she hated being interrupted in the middle of a shower. She wasn’t even sure she’d gotten all of the conditioner out of her hair, and from the strong smell of the soap coming from her body, she most definitely hadn’t rinsed it all off her skin. Whoever he was, the cop at her door was probably about to get an ear full.

Rhiannon strode to the door on long, angry legs, grabbed
the handle, and swung it open wide.

She was about demand, “What?!” when s
he froze, her hand on the door and her breath caught in her chest, while the world came to a grinding halt around her.

Blue
eyes….

“
Miss Dante?” the man asked, his voice deep and melodic and sensual – and all too familiar. “I’m sorry to disturb you.” Those blue eyes shot to the towel on her head, then down to her chest, where her nipples were so hard, they were scraping the inside of her t-shirt. “You were obviously busy.” He pulled his badge out from under a brown leather jacket and held it up for her to see. “If you’d like, I can come back at another time.”

Rhiannon didn’t respond. She
couldn’t
respond. It was him.

It was
him
.

It was t
he man from her dreams.

And
it was the masquerade gala stranger in black.

Shock ramrodded through her system, at once making her wonder whether she’d slipped and fallen in the shower. Numbly, and from far off, she heard herself reply, “Yes, that’s me.
And no, now is fine.”

But it’s not fine!
she scolded herself.
You’re half dressed! You’re soaking wet! You can barely form whole, coherent thoughts!
But she had zero control over her motor skills at that moment. It was like she was right back on that dance floor, allowing a complete stranger to lead her into oblivion.

“I’m D
etective Michael Salvatore with the NYPD,” he introduced himself with that bright, white, killer smile. He slipped the badge back into his jacket and said, “I was wondering if you might have time for a few questions.”

The
two halves of Rhiannon’s consciousness had split the moment she’d opened the door. The responsible, mature, and somewhat proud half of her brain was on one side of her skull yelling at her to snap out of it, put on a passive mask, and deal with whatever was going down. But the other half was firmly planted in dreamland, comparing the man before her to the figure she’d seen in her sleep, standing at the edge of that abyss all bruised and bloodied and beautiful, with a massive sword in his hand. That same half of her brain was also currently out on the dance floor, remembering the way his hand had felt at her back, the way he’d moved her so expertly, his hard body pressed against hers, and the way his breath upon her throat had caused her to call lightning from the skies.

Fortunately,
the first half of her brain was still more or less in control. It forced her to think rationally.

Rationally, t
here was no
way
this man before her – a police officer, and therefore the enemy as far as she and her very secretive career were concerned – was the man from the dance floor, the man who had turned pennies into pure gold. He was a
cop
, for crying out loud.

“Concerning what?” she asked
, almost as if she were challenging him. She wasn’t a redhead for nothing. No doubt, he hadn’t failed to notice that she had yet to let him into her apartment, badge or not.

Those blue eyes of his flashed, stark an
d unyielding, and butterflies, probably swallowtails this time, alighted in her stomach.

There was a warning in those eyes. She was playing with blue fire. The hottest kind of all.

“I’m afraid there was an incident downtown a few nights ago, and an eye witness turned in a video recorded on his phone.” He paused, allowing the words to sink in for her.

Which is exactly what they did. They sunk in so deep and so low, she felt them hit rock bottom – just before she felt herself do the same thing.

This is it,
she thought.
Oh my God, this is it. They’ve found me out. It’s over.

“Miss Dante, do you mind if I come inside? I do have quite a few questions to ask you and I doubt you want me to conduct the investigation on your front porch.” He gestured to the yard behind
him, where one of the neighbors, who’d been walking his dog, was already slowing down to eaves drop.

Still, she hesitated
, feeling as though if she allowed him passage across her threshold, there would be no going back.

Detective
Salvatore leaned in a little. “Miss Dante, let me make myself very clear. I’m afraid the woman in the video very strongly resembles you.”

Rhiannon felt the blood leave her chee
ks. The way he’d said that hinted that there could actually be no mistake. Imaging technology these days was often quite good at matching faces.

Someone had caught her on film.

It was her worst nightmare.

As if controlling her body through a swimming pool, she saw herself step to the side and allow the detective entrance to her apartment. She closed the door behind them, and heard it echo in her head like a portent.

“There was a bullet casing found at the site of the fire. Do you by any chance happen to own a Colt 1911, Miss Dante?” Detective Salvatore moved into her living room and began surreptitiously looking around. She could feel him taking everything in – every tiny detail. No doubt, he noticed that everything was perfectly clean and organized, and the carpet was brand new. The apartment screamed “new tenant.” She wondered if he would figure out that she’d only been there a few days. And then she wondered if he would think that was important.

Her body replied for her, her mouth producing the words that her mind couldn’t quite get straight fast enough. “Yes, I do,” she told him, “but a lot of people do. It’s the second most popular weapon in the US.”

Detective Salvatore faced her and smiled, his blue eyes pinning her to the floor where she stood.

Rhiannon’s skin flushed.
That smile said a thousand things. It said he was smart; he knew her response was practiced and automatic. He knew she’d probably chosen the weapon for exactly the reason she’d quoted. He also knew that she was worried.

And
his smile hinted at all kinds of hot, sweaty, unmentionable things that were just impossible, because he was a cop and he was on to her.

“
I’m assuming it’s registered.”

“Of course.”

He nodded, waiting a beat. Then, “Miss Dante,” he said, touching his chin thoughtfully and moving in close enough that she could smell the leather of his jacket and the aftershave he’d used that morning. It smelled a little like sandalwood, and it made her head spin. “Can you tell me where you were Thursday night at around one a.m.?”

Rhiannon was prepared for this particular question. You didn’t do what she did on a regular basis without setting up alibis.

“I was with my boyfriend,” she said, raising her chin. “We went to see the latest Avengers movie.”

The detective’s brow rose, and his eyes sparkled. “Really?” he asked
softly, and utterly disbelievingly. “I’ll be wanting to speak with him of course. And the theater you attended. For verification.”

“Of course.” Rhi
annon moved to the kitchen bar where a pad of paper and a cup holder of pens waited. She wrote down two phone numbers on a sheet, tore it out, and handed it to Salvatore.

The detective took it
slowly, and as he did, his fingertips brushed against hers. A zap of something warm moved between them, but Rhiannon forced herself to ignore it.

“Thank you,” he said smoothly. “Would you mind if I had a look at your weapon while I’m here?”

She was ready for that too. She’d had it professionally cleaned, as usual. “Not at all,” she said. Then she slid past him to head toward the hall. She could feel him following her. She should tell him something. She should tell him to stay where he was, that he had no right to venture further into her home without a warrant.

But that would be as good as admitting she had something to hide.

So she said nothing and continued to the bedroom, all the while with his blue eyes boring holes in the back of her body.

She left him standing in the hallway; the detective had enough manners not to traipse into the privacy of her bedroom after her, and made her way around her bed to the safe on the other side. She placed her hand into a print reader, waited for it to scan and verify that it was her, and listened for the click. It unlatched,
and she pulled the door open to extract her Colt handgun.

When she returned to the hallway, making sure to carry the weapon by its body and not its handle so that she would appear thoroughly unthreatening, it was to find the detective had disappeared.

“Detective Salvatore?” she called quietly.

“In here,” he replied from her laundry room.

Few apartments in New York came with a washer and dryer, and even fewer came with actual laundry rooms, but it was the one thing she had insisted upon when locating the apartment, and fortunately her employer paid her enough that she could afford the extra expense. She hated walking all over her dirty clothes because there was no actual place to put them before washing them. And the truth was, she was usually just too busy or tired or lazy to get around to washing them that often.

Rhiannon moved down the hall to the laundry room and peeked in.
He’d turned on the light and was standing near the lidded laundry basket.

He
raised his hand so she could see what he held.

It was a pair of jeans.
It was the pair she’d been wearing Thursday night. A series of tears and a massive red bloodstain marred the left leg of the denim garment.

W
hat was left of the blood in Rhiannon’s face quickly drained away.

Detective
Salvatore didn’t miss a beat. “You know, it’s interesting,” he said, looking from her to the jeans. “The woman on the video that was turned in also appeared to have been injured.” He looked back up at her. “In the same manner.”