Kitabı oku: «Cassidy and the Princess», sayfa 4

But he’d been warned that he had limited time, no more than a week. Any longer would be far too expensive in terms of both money and manpower. Which meant he had to bait the trap quickly.

His first concern, though, had been Marise’s safety. He would have additional detectives in the house at all times—ones he had chosen himself.

He also had asked to be told if any member of the department asked to be on the special squad. He still hadn’t dismissed the idea that the killer might be a cop. So he wasn’t taking any chances.

Once Cassidy had Marise inside Manny’s car, he threw his keys to one of the uniforms. “My car is the blue one over there,” he said, gesturing to where he’d parked in an emergency spot. “Do you have a squad car?”

The senior of the two officers nodded.

“Have someone pick it up. You two can take my car and follow us.”

The older one nodded. The younger one couldn’t take his eyes off Marise Merrick. For some reason, that annoyed Cassidy considerably. He put Marise’s bag in the front seat next to Manny, then got in the back seat with Marise.

He felt unusually large and awkward. Every movement Marise made was graceful. He felt like an elephant next to a gazelle. But then she smiled at him, and he didn’t feel awkward at all.

He felt something else altogether. And as he did, a knot of apprehension twisted his stomach. He didn’t need this. Any personal feelings interfered with what he needed to do: protect her and catch a killer.

He steeled himself against her appeal. She already treated him like a friend. She was that way with Manny, too. And that touch had been like a hot electrical wire, snaking across his body, sparking reactions he didn’t want to feel.

Cassidy knew he was glowering. Manny told him he did it better than anyone. But when he looked at Marise, he saw that she was unimpressed. Instead, she regarded him with bemusement.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For putting your life in danger?”

“For letting me do something about it.”

Something shifted inside him. She’d said the words with such simplicity. Even gratitude. He felt like a fraud. He was using her. Nothing more than that. And he wondered why she seemed to cater so much to her mother, and even to Paul, when there was so much strength and substance to her.

“Has your mother always been your manager?” he asked to dissipate the expectancy that was radiating between them.

She tensed slightly, then seemed to forcibly relax. “Yes,” she said. “She was a skater herself. She knows the business. She’s wonderful with the costumes.” Then she turned and looked out the window. “Are we really going to your house?”

“Don’t expect much,” he warned her. “I bought it at a bargain price because it needed so much work.”

“Are there really a lot of policemen in the neighborhood?”

“Manny lives half a block away. A captain in another division lives three houses down. Two other members of the Atlanta P.D. live within two blocks. A lieutenant in the sheriff’s department and a highway patrol major also live nearby. That’s how I found my house. It had been an eyesore, and Manny knew I like to work with my hands.”

She gazed up at him with those magnificent eyes. “You’re doing the work?”

“Some of it,” he said.

“All of it,” Manny interrupted. “My wife calls him when she needs something done. It’s humiliating.”

They traveled the rest of the way in silence. He didn’t see any other cars keeping pace with them, but then, they were not trying to hide. In fact, he was going to make sure her whereabouts were leaked.

They wanted the assailant to come after her. If all went according to plan, she wouldn’t be there then. A policewoman would be.

But there was something he’d learned long ago. Whatever could go wrong, would.

“What do we do next?” she asked.

“After you get settled, we’ll go back to the hospital and start going over personnel photos. He doesn’t know how little you really did see. We’re going to make him wonder a little more.”

“If he’s with the hospital.”

“My guess is he’s connected in some way.”

“What if he doesn’t find out I’m…helping to find him?”

“Then, I’ll leak a story to the media that we have a witness who can identify the killer and is going through personnel files. I’d rather he found out another way. It wouldn’t be as obvious.”

“If he’s as smart as you think he is, why would he walk into a trap?’

“Because doing nothing would be more dangerous. And serial killers usually think they are smarter than anyone else. He’ll know I’m protecting you. He won’t know about the others.”

She nodded, apparently satisfied.

As they drove into his driveway his stomach tightened. He’d tried to tidy up, but it was a man’s place. Still, it was probably the safest place for Marise. What neighbors were not law enforcement officers were sympathetic to them. All were friends. Manny planned to visit each house and ask that they keep an eye out for strangers.

It would be strange to have a woman in the house again. He’d dated since his marriage, but he’d never brought any of them home. Not since Laine left.

He’d not gotten around yet to painting the trim, and the house looked a little like an aging dowager without makeup. The exterior was a bungalow in an older neighborhood, a community where prices were spiraling because of their in-town location. After he and Laine had bought it, he’d spent the next two years fixing it up.

While he had thought the house would help the marriage, it hadn’t. He’d spent every waking moment away from the police department working on it. He hadn’t noticed her growing distance.

Marise was looking at the house with interest.

He sure as hell wasn’t going to apologize for it. Yet he knew she was used to much better. She probably had a large home somewhere.

Manny drove into the garage, which was one of the first things Cassidy had added. It was only a one-car garage—there wasn’t room for more—but he’d built it with a direct entrance into the house. Now he was grateful that he had; it made the place safer.

The exterior was brick with a screened front porch. There once had been a back porch but he’d closed that in and made a sunroom. For Laine. Now he seldom used it. He was seldom here, in fact.

He opened the car door and started to go around to the other side, but Marise let herself out. She didn’t act like a princess, but then, princesses didn’t agree to be bait. She didn’t say anything, but followed him toward the entrance to the house as the garage door closed behind the three of them. He opened the door leading to the kitchen.

It had undergone a frantic face-lift. Dishes in the sink had gone into the dishwasher, a five-day-old pizza had gone from the refrigerator into the garbage. There was nothing to brighten the room, however, but the yellow daisy curtains Laine had selected.

He led the way into the living room, which was furnished with what his male friends called “early bachelor.” Dark overstuffed sofa and chair, a large-screen television and bookcases. He’d put clothes away, but books and magazines, and even several newspapers, lay haphazardly on tables.

He saw Marise’s gaze go to the sunroom just beyond the living area. It had cheap patio furniture. But her eyes lit.

“What a wonderful room,” she said.

“Cass built it,” Manny said. “Cass can build anything. He’s building a sailboat up at his sister’s place.”

Cassidy noted that Manny did not call him Hoppy. Perversely, he was annoyed. Manny was obviously trying to play match-maker.

As if he and the princess had anything in common.

He was very aware of that as she stood awkwardly in the house of which he was so proud, the house he had remodeled, first with love and then with resignation. He was no longer building for the future. He was finished with that part of his life.

“You have my room,” he said. “We have detectives in the second. I’ll sleep in my office.”

“I’ll take the office,” she said.

“You haven’t seen it,” he said. “No one but me could find a way through it.”

She cocked her head. “That bad?”

“That bad,” he confirmed.

“All right, I’ll take the bedroom,” she agreed.

He took her suitcase into a bedroom and laid it down on a chair he’d brought in from the dining room. “There’s a bathroom right outside the room. It’s yours. We’ll use the one off the living room.”

“I feel like I’m dispossessing you,” she said with a hint of a smile.

“Believe me, as a stakeout, this is pure luxury,” he said.

“This is a stakeout?”

Her blue eyes were intense. He realized his error immediately. To him and the others, it might be a stakeout. To her, it was her life. But he wasn’t good at niceties. Never had been. He changed the subject. “Have you had any breakfast?”

“No.”

“What about some frozen waffles.”

She smiled. A genuine wide smile that made him want to do the same.

“It sounds wickedly wonderful,” she said.

“I doubt they’re wonderful,” he said. “Filling, yes.” But the anticipation didn’t leave her eyes, and he wondered about that. She was slim. How much had she sacrificed to stay that way?

Manny was taking care of the police officers. They would stay outside until the detectives arrived. Then the police officers would take the detectives’ vehicles back to the department. Cassidy didn’t want any extra cars in front of the house.

“I’ll unpack,” Marise said, and glided out of the room, leaving it very empty.

Manny returned and found Cassidy in the kitchen. “You got to be kidding,” he said as he eyed the package of frozen waffles.

“You have any better ideas?”

“Yeah. A lot of them. I’ll send Janie over to cook you all a good meal.”

“Maybe Janie will have something to say about that.”

“Nope. She’s dying to meet the princess.”

“She’s not a princess,” Cassidy growled.

“I think she is,” Manny said with offended dignity. “And she likes you.”

“She needs me. And you. There’s nothing more,” Cassidy said.

“You never fixed waffles for me.”

“They are frozen,” Cassidy said patiently.

“Those, either,” Manny said with a grin.

By the time the first popped up, Marise had returned to the kitchen. “I like your house,” she said.

“It’s not finished,” Cassidy said.

“I still like it. I always wanted to live in a home that looked like a real home.”

“Where do you live?”

“A condominium in California when we’re not traveling,” Marise said wistfully as she took a waffle on a plate. He’d already put a big dollop of butter on it, as well as real maple syrup.

He put another on a plate for Manny and popped one in the toaster for himself, then he leaned against the sink and watched her eat.

“A glass of milk?” he asked.

“Thank you.”

The milk was spoiled.

“Coffee?” he suggested.

“That would be good.”

He looked for the instant coffee jar. It was empty. Manny was shaking his head.

“Water would be fine,” she said.

He poured her a glass of water and sat down to discover that his own waffle was now cold.

This isn’t going to work.

But it had to.

It was going to be hell, though. Being in the same room with her disconcerted him. And it had been a long time since he’d felt so…inadequate.

Just a few days. Then he could reclaim his life. His instant coffee. His hot frozen waffles. A shirt thrown on the sofa.

A few days.

A very long few days.

And, he thought as he watched her enjoying those slightly over-toasted waffles, too few.

That last thought was more terrifying than any killer.

Chapter 5

Marise usually had a can of vegetable juice or some protein-laden drink for breakfast. A waffle, even this waffle, was a treat. Because weight was so crucial in pairs skating, she watched every bite of food. She rarely ate for pleasure.

But now she was hungry and she didn’t care. A cup of coffee would have been nice, but she was more than compensated for the lack by the look of chagrin on her host’s face.

She was intrigued with the house itself, particularly the sunroom that was all glass with unusual angles. If MacKay had designed it, he definitely had a bent for architecture. The rest of the house looked unfinished. There were few pieces of furniture in both the living area and her bedroom. What there was in the living room was worn, but looked comfortable.

Still, there was a warmth about it, a symmetry of color and space. Perhaps because of the books that crowded out everything else. For some reason, she hadn’t expected that of a police detective—and that, she realized, was snobbish. But the books included a potpourri of titles: histories, biographies, novels, shipbuilding, architecture. There was an appetite for knowledge revealed in their variety.

There was no similar variety in his kitchen or cupboards. The kitchen looked virtually bare, and when he’d opened the refrigerator, she’d noticed that it, too, looked bare except for a six-pack of beer. The freezer, though, was full. Mostly with frozen waffles, frozen dinners, frozen hotdogs.

Like a sponge, she soaked in evidence of who the man was. She had, after all, put her life in his hands.

The waffle was like manna. She finished and looked at him. His was gone, too, although his partner’s remained nearly untouched.

“What now?” she asked.

“We go to the hospital and look at photos.”

“I wouldn’t recognize anyone.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

“Okay,” she said. “Can I wear this?” She looked down at the track suit she was still wearing.

A smile touched his eyes for the first time. “Yep. You look fine.”

“I look terrible,” she disagreed, knowing that her hair needed washing and her eyes must have shadows. She hadn’t slept well last night. “When do you want to go?”

“Now?” he asked.

Better to get it over with. The sooner the man was caught, the sooner she could get on with her own life. The sooner she would be safe.

If she could ever really feel safe again.

Something important—something valuable—had left her life.

Cassidy must have seen it in her eyes. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You will probably need to see someone,” he said gently. “You’ve gone through two traumatic events within thirty hours.”

He’d known exactly how she was feeling. She wondered whether it was impersonal, whether he treated every victim like that, or felt the same odd connection with her that she felt with him.

The warmth of his hand flooded through her like a warm syrup, slow but very satisfying.

Then he moved it, gathered up the dishes and took them to the sink.

She stood. She would need a touch of lipstick, if nothing else.

The doorbell rang, and she stood aside as MacKay went to answer it. Two men stood in the doorway.

MacKay introduced them. Sergeant Sam Preston and Detective Dan Kelley. The latter was almost as tall as MacKay. The other was shorter, wiry thin. Both were polite but couldn’t quite conceal their curiosity.

MacKay walked them around the house, showed them the second bedroom and explained that they would stay inside. He didn’t want anyone to see them.

“I’ll have someone in an attic three houses down. They will have a direct view of what’s going on outside,” he added.

Marise felt a little overwhelmed. She was used to a lot of people around her—her mother, her partner, her coach. But all these hard-eyed strangers with guns were a different matter altogether.

“Is anyone going with us to the hospital?” she asked MacKay.

“Just Manny and myself,” he said.

Just. She felt safe with that just.

He made a phone call, while she prowled around the room, stopping at the fireplace with some photos on it. A man and woman together with two children. She readily recognized the boy as Cassidy. The woman was exotically beautiful with red hair and striking green eyes, and she wore a bolero jacket over what appeared to be a red silk blouse. The man next to her, on the other hand, looked quiet and dignified and lacked the open smile that his companion had.

Another picture, obviously taken years later, portrayed three small girls, two dogs and a cat. And finally, in a third frame, was a young girl in a ballet costume. Marise wondered whether the children in either photo belonged to him.

“Those are nieces with the dogs,” MacKay said.

Marise had been so enraptured by the photo that she hadn’t noticed he was off the phone.

“They’re beautiful,” she said. “How old are they?”

“Four, six and eight,” he said.

“And the girl in the ballet costume?”

“Manny’s daughter. She’s my godchild.”

Manny joined them then. “She skates, too. She would love to meet you.”

“I would like to meet her, too,” Marise said. She’d always enjoyed talking to young skaters. She turned back to Cassidy. “Your mother and father?”

He nodded.

“Are they still alive?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “They are that.” His tone was wry.

She must have looked surprised.

“They’re the Fighting MacKays,” he explained, resigned bitterness shading his voice. “They live apart, but they revel in battling each other. I was just talking to my mother. I was to go over there tonight for supper.” He hesitated, then continued, “She intends to bring over some food tonight.”

“Is it safe?” she asked.

“I think so. The detectives are here. And only death or a hurricane could stop her. Probably not even a hurricane.”

Marise glanced at the picture again, and the smile. She thought she would like the woman.

MacKay pulled on a sports jacket over his shirt. He went to the door and glanced out, then led the way to the garage and the car, holding the passenger door open for her. Manny had followed and stepped into the back seat.

The garage door opened.

It was beginning.

She was a good actress. Cassidy noticed that right away.

The hospital personnel had not been happy at the idea of pulling identification photos from thousands of files, but Marise Merrick’s charm soon had three people scurrying back and forth.

Only Cassidy knew that she hadn’t seen enough to identify her attacker, that this was an exercise for the benefit of one unknown person who was probably miles away.

Manny was doing some prowling of his own, trying to learn if anyone was showing an undue interest in what was transpiring in the administrative offices.

Marise continued to study photos for four hours, while MacKay perused the personnel files, noting names he planned to run through the police computer. But as she looked increasingly uncomfortable, he rose. “You’ve had enough,” he said.

“I can stay longer,” she protested.

But she couldn’t. She had deep shadows around her eyes, and she’d been moving restlessly, as if sitting in one position so long had become uncomfortable. She was probably still bruised.

He felt like a bully—a feeling that had never occurred to him before when he worked with a civilian.

“We’ve made our point,” he said. “We’ll be back tomorrow, and let everyone know it. We’ll also have more people who believe you can recognize him.”

“How many officers do you have?” she asked.

“As many as I need for a week,” he said. “You are very high priority,” he added.

“And after a week?”

“It will be reassessed,” he said honestly, and he saw the fear come back into her eyes.

She tried to hide it. “That’s just as well. I have to get back to…the competition.”

His eyes held hers. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Neither here nor anywhere else.” He hadn’t meant to say that. He didn’t even know if it was a promise he could keep. After a moment, he added, “We’re trying to find a decoy to fit your description. So far, no luck.”

But he would keep her safe. One way or another. He had no choice now that he’d prompted her into making herself a target. He held out his hand, taking her much smaller one in his fingers. The contact was warm, and the warmth became heat, and the heat became electric, spreading sparks throughout his body. The air was suddenly close, dense, filled with the expectancy that precedes violent storms, and a palpable tension radiated between them.

He swallowed hard, trying to understand why he couldn’t take his fingers away from hers, his gaze from the dark blue eyes that were swirling with need and a bewildered understanding.

Desire. Hunger. Need.

Caution.

His was a body full of writhing reactions and equally writhing emotions, and he didn’t recognize any of them.

He called himself every kind of fool, and yet the electricity remained, the attraction growing more irresistible. He didn’t know how long he would have stood there, if the door to the room had not opened.

She jerked away. He balled his fingers into a fist, feeling the heat from her touch like a brand, burning deep inside.

“I’m going on break,” said one of the clerks who had been assigned to help them. She looked at them, her head swiveling from one to the other, as if she recognized that something momentous had just occurred.

It wasn’t momentous, Cassidy told himself. It was merely an attraction that could be controlled.

Had to be controlled. For both their sakes.

The restaurant—no, it was a tavern, according to the sign in front—was dark, noisy and crowded. It smelled of beer and chili and something else that made Marise’s nose twitch with anticipation.

This was an adventure. A dangerous adventure, but an adventure just the same. Something far removed from the routine of hotel dining rooms and watching everything she ate. Recklessness was stimulating.

“It’s…very different,” she said, taking in the eclectic atmosphere and clientele that seemed to be a mixture of businessmen, students, white-collar workers and sports fans—who sat at the bar and cheered action on television sets located throughout. She couldn’t help but catch MacKay’s surprised look.

Had he expected her to dislike it? A test of some kind?

“Yep,” Manny said happily. “Manuel’s is unique. Every cop and politician in this end of the city eats here,” Manny said. “So do a lot of the sheriff’s deputies. And it’s probably the safest place in Atlanta.”

“The guy has to be working alone,” MacKay said. “He probably wouldn’t have had time to learn that we were there today and follow us. And both Manny and I kept watch. No one followed us.”

“Don’t we want someone to follow us?”

“Yes, but only when we’re prepared.”

“It didn’t take long for him to find me at the hospital.”

Manny looked stricken at the comment. She glanced at the man beside her. A muscle throbbed at his throat.

“Next time, you won’t be alone,” Detective MacKay said.

She tried to concentrate on his words, but she couldn’t. Something else was happening. She had been aware of an attraction the first time she met him. She’d been stunned at the hospital when their hands met and seemed to melt into each other. Instantaneous combustion. And now, when her leg accidently touched his, she felt another unwanted surge of heat gallop through her traitorous body.

A waiter in an apron came over to them, and Manny looked at Marise with an eager gleam in his eyes. “The chili dog is the specialty.”

She read the menu with an unknown sense of freedom. Paul would feel every ounce of additional weight, but she could lose it in three or four days. “A chili dog,” she said almost defiantly. “And iced tea.”

Manny ordered two chili dogs despite MacKay’s raised eyebrows and meaningful look at his shape. MacKay then ordered a chili dog and iced tea, too.

She looked around the tavern. It had character. It had tables with carved names and initials, and an array of photos behind the bar.

MacKay was watching her carefully, as if she might stand up and run out the back door.

“I like it,” she said again.

“You’ll like it even better when you have the chili dog,” Manny said with a grin.

She smiled at him. “Detective MacKay showed me a picture of your daughter.”

His broad homely face broke into a wide smile. “She takes after her mother.”

“I would love to meet her.”

The smile turned into a beam. “She would be beside herself.”

She looked at the man next to her. “When?”

MacKay hesitated. And some of her enthusiasm paled, along with that odd sense of anticipation she was feeling. Was he wondering whether putting them together might place the child in harm’s way?

“If you don’t think…” she started haltingly.

His lips became less grim. “We’ll arrange something. Perhaps tomorrow afternoon.”

“She has practice then,” Manny said.

“Then, I can watch her,” Marise said, enthusiasm bubbling up inside her. She loved working with young skaters. She loved children, in fact, and someday wanted a bunch of them. One thing that had kept her from accepting Paul’s proposal was knowing he wanted to continue skating indefinitely and avoided any talk of children.

MacKay looked at his partner. “I don’t like the idea of possibly leading the killer to Joey, to someplace she might be vulnerable.”

Marise was plunged back into reality. For just the barest of seconds, she had felt that MacKay wasn’t overly worried that the killer was being led to her. But then, she wasn’t a child. And she had agreed, knowing full well the dangers.

“No,” she agreed. “Of course not.”

“We can guard you while you’re here,” MacKay said, evidently reading her thoughts. “But if anything goes wrong, the killer could try to use Joey.”

Manny’s grin disappeared. For some reason it didn’t seem odd to Marise that she thought of him as “Manny,” but tried to keep thinking of his partner as “Detective MacKay.” Or just MacKay. Manny looked like a big teddy bear, and his face was open, his smile immediate and real. Cassidy MacKay, on the other hand, was reserve personified. He rarely relaxed, and on the rare occasions that he smiled, his lips barely moved, one side quirking upward. Usually, the smile was gone so quickly, she wondered whether she only imagined it. She felt as if he were always testing her in some way, that he was not quite sure she was strong enough to do what she’d agreed to do.

He would learn that it took more discipline and determination to get where she was today than probably to be a cop. She had skated through intense pain. She’d competed when she had a temperature raging over one hundred and three. She had practiced until she could barely walk to her room and then ached all night, muscles contracting until she wanted to scream. And yet, she would be practicing the next day, knowing she would face a similar sleepless night.

As for danger, she risked major injury every time she went on the ice. Lifts, throws and twists, especially the death spiral, could easily end in injury. Even the unison skating—for which she and Paul were particularly known—was dangerous. One misstep, one back spasm, one second’s hesitation, and she could fall, her head dangerously close to his blades.

Still, it was obvious Cassidy had doubts about her staying power.

Well, he would learn.

The food came. The hotdog was steaming and covered with chilies and onions. It smelled better than anything she could remember. She bit into it, and it tasted every bit as good as it had smelled. She ate the rest of it as if she were Tantalus unchained. She was as hungry as the mythical figure condemned to stand in water without drink and see a fruit-laden tree he couldn’t reach.

Then she looked up and saw the two detectives watching her. She licked her lips as she finished off the last piece of bun.

“Would you like another one?” Manny asked.

Yes. No. She shouldn’t. “Thank you,” she said a little primly. “I would.”

MacKay raised an eyebrow. But he said nothing, merely signaled the waiter and pointed down at her empty plate.

She felt ridiculously content. Her senses were all alive. Just as they always were in those first seconds when she and Paul skated out on the rink. But at those times she was concentrating with every fiber of her being, her body reacting to Paul’s and to the music and the audience.

She’d never felt that way off the ice. Not until now. She felt the electricity of MacKay’s body, the warmth of Manny’s smile, savored the sense of adventure and freedom and recklessness despite the awareness that a killer was out there.

And she enjoyed the bemusement that changed MacKay’s face, making it look more human. She remembered the photos on his fireplace. Parents. Nieces. Godchild. None of a wife or children of his own.

Had there been a wife? One who had disappointed him? Marise had hesitated to ask. It was none of her business.

Yet her leg—the one that periodically, accidently touched his—felt so warm. And the core of her so…needy.

The second hotdog came, and suddenly she was no longer hungry. Even the smell didn’t tempt her. She realized that the first one had filled her but that it had taken a few moments for the knowledge to reach her brain. But she didn’t want MacKay to know that.

She picked it up and took a bite, aware that chili had smeared across her lips and even part of her chin. Then she set it back down. She didn’t have to prove anything to anyone.

Her eyes met his, and they weren’t amused. Instead, they seemed to smolder. MacKay filled her consciousness. She felt as if they were centered in a field of energy, two lodestones being pulled inexorably together.

The surrounding voices faded. The televisions muted. Then she realized she hadn’t taken a breath for several seconds. She forced herself to breathe. She moved her hand, and it accidently touched his leg. She saw him flinch as if it burned him.

Then he moved, taking a wallet from his pocket, and she saw that his hand was none-too-steady this time. That surprised her. She knew how affected she’d been; she hadn’t expected that he would be affected in the same mind-numbing, soul-searing way.