by Debra Webb
She braced her elbows on the table and massaged her temples. “I’ve tried to consider every angle. Maybe he promised something he couldn’t deliver or ventured into illegal territory and Molly found out. They might have argued and things got out of control. Maybe he hurt her and didn’t mean to…panicked and hid the body. Or maybe someone he owed something is holding her or—”
He reached across the table and took her right hand into his. “She could still be alive.”
The softness of that husky voice…the sympathy she saw in his eyes damaged her defenses somehow and made her heart beat so much faster.
“But it’s not likely,” she admitted. She’d held that possibility at bay about as long as she could. No one had seen or heard from Molly in six weeks. The chances that she was still alive grew slimmer every day. She knew the statistics, had watched similar cases play out in the news. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to give up. She had to know. She had to try to find her…to learn the truth.
For the most part she’d been convinced Landon had done this…until today. When he’d told her that he didn’t want to take any chances with hindering the investigation into finding Molly, Serena had seen the despair in his eyes. His desperation had been palpable.
Could anyone fake that kind of pain?
As much as she enjoyed the feel of Todd’s strong hand around hers, her head throbbed with tension. She pulled free of his touch and rubbed at her temples.
“Do you have something for a headache?” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this kind of headache coming on. She’d suffered with migraines during her adolescent years, but she hadn’t been hit by one in years. Damn, she didn’t need this right now.
“Sure thing. Give me a minute.”
She closed her eyes and focused on relaxing the band of muscles around her skull. So much tension. Not enough sleep. Prime precursors for a migraine.
A bottle of water as well as a bottle of over-the-counter painkillers appeared on the table in front of her.
“Thank you.” She downed two of the pills and hoped they would do the trick.
“You need to relax.”
His hands settled on her shoulders and she stiffened.
“I’m pretty good at this,” he urged.
She shivered and closed her eyes. Told herself just to relax and enjoy.
“Very tense,” he said as his hands began to knead her shoulders. “Just relax.”
She couldn’t do this. “I’m not sure—”
He leaned down close to her ear. “It’s just a harmless shoulder rub, Serena. Relax.”
The feel of his breath on her sensitive flesh combined with her own weariness made her cave. She did as he said, closed her eyes again and let the feel of his hands work their magic. The strength of his fingers as they squeezed and kneaded made her entire body weak with need. A moan vibrated across her lips. She didn’t try to stop it. Even she wasn’t that strong.
He touched her neck. She shivered. Felt her pulse quicken.
“You should wear your hair down,” he murmured. Then those talented fingers trailed up her neck and threaded into her hair.
She wanted to protest but somehow the words wouldn’t form on her tongue.
The pins holding her hair clattered to the table one by one. Her breath flew out of her lungs when his fingers moved more deeply into her hair, caressed her skull. Her head fell back, her neck limp with pleasure.
How could he do that?
Another of those satisfied sounds slipped past her lips. This felt so good.
Then he moved on to her temples, down her jaw and along her hairline where the skin was so responsive to touch that she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. Her heart thundered. Her body felt too warm….
She didn’t know where the brush came from but he was suddenly brushing her hair with soft, even strokes. It felt heavenly.
“Better?”
She might have survived without embarrassing herself if he hadn’t uttered the solitary word so close to her ear. The feel of his lips against that ultrasensitive shell sent a stab of desire slicing through her. She gasped with the intensity of it. Her eyes flew open and only then did she realize how very close to a meltdown she was.
Scrambling out of the chair, she almost fell in her attempt to put some distance between them. “I should get back. I—”
If the deep sapphire of his eyes was any indication, she wasn’t the only one affected by the turn the moment had taken. He blinked and the cloud of lust disappeared.
“There’s something we need to do first.”
Pull it together, Serena, she ordered. Finding Molly was too important to let anything else get in the way, especially her own confused feelings.
“What?” Her voice came out a little more sharply than she’d intended, but she wasn’t sorry. He’d had no business playing with her emotions that way. He had to have known what he was doing.
“We need Delia Neely’s records from Dr. Wright’s office.”
“Are you insane?”
“The doctor is dead,” he said unrepentantly. “Ms. Neely is—” he shrugged “—who knows where. I don’t see how she would mind. Besides, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. All we need is a look. Sixty seconds, that’s all.”
“You’re serious.” They’d been through this routine before. How could the Colby Agency send her someone prepared to break the law?
“Dead serious,” he returned with unabashed arrogance. “Think about it, Serena. If playing by the rules would give you the answers you wanted, the police would have found them. Whatever happened to your friend, it wasn’t executed by the rules. We can either keep butting the same brick wall or we can go around it. The choice is yours.”
He was right. Dammit. “I have to think.” She turned away from him, struggled with that age-old problem: be a good girl and do this the right way or take a chance…do whatever it took to find her sister.
“The clock is ticking, Serena. Let’s not waste time.”
She wheeled on him. “All right. Let’s do it.”
A grin spread across his face. To her supreme irritation her heart fluttered.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
Chapter Nine
Todd set his phone to vibrate. Braddock had called twice already. He would be mad, but Todd wasn’t about to risk Braddock figuring out he was up to something. The man was entirely too perceptive. Todd definitely wasn’t used to anyone being able to read him so well.
It wasn’t as if what he was about to do was that bad. Wright was dead. Both patients, Molly Landon and Delia Neely, were missing in action. If one or both were in trouble, what he was about to do could possibly help.
Maybe the idea was slightly illegal, but sometimes walking that thin line was the only way.
He was rationalizing, he knew. But he couldn’t stop now. He was on to something…he could feel it in his gut.
Braddock would blow a fuse, but Todd had no intention of ignoring where this lead might take him. Technically his orders were to pass along to Braddock anything he learned through Serena so that the more experienced investigator could follow up.
Except, how could he prove himself to Victoria if he waited around doing nothing but babysitting Serena?
Not that it was such a chore. He glanced at the woman next to him in the car. He thought about telling her that she should definitely wear her hair down all the time but he had an idea where that would lead. Straight to her telling him where to get off.
A ripple of lust went through him. He should never have started that massage. In the beginning his intentions had been honorable. He’d wanted to help. But the more he’d touched her and the more she’d responded to his touch…well, he’d worked up a hell of a physical condition. One that was way off limits when he was on the job.
“I must have been out of my mind to let you talk me into this,” she muttered without glancing his way.
The sun had dropped below the treetops but it
s fading reach still provided enough of a glow for him to study her profile. She didn’t like being involved with anything underhanded, which pretty much eliminated her, in his opinion, from any sort of suspect list.
She might not particularly like Landon, and no doubt considered him responsible for his missing wife, but she had no desire to harm him in any way. Serena Blake was genuinely concerned with helping the woman who was, or had been, her closest friend.
For the first time since he’d been assigned to this case he hoped like hell it wasn’t too late to save Molly Landon and her unborn child. That goal had, of course, been in the back of his mind from the beginning, but now the missing woman was more than a detail in a case…she was real. Real because her fate would greatly affect the woman sitting in the encroaching gloom with him right now.
Todd leaned forward, watched a woman dressed in a nurse’s uniform exit the clinic’s side entrance. “That’s the last one.” The other three members of the staff had left nearly an hour ago. He’d done his research. He knew the names of every staff member as well as their work schedules.
“Oh, God.”
Serena didn’t want to do this. He should be ashamed of himself for pushing her into it.
“Look.” He sighed, wanted to kick himself for going soft. This wasn’t part of his plan. “You can stay in the car. This shouldn’t take long.”
“No way,” she countered. “If you’re going in, so am I.”
He got the distinct impression that her insistence had something to do with distrust. Or maybe she simply couldn’t resist a challenge, real or imagined.
“There’s no reason for both of us to go in,” he argued. Other than, a little voice reminded, the fact that you are supposed to be keeping an eye on her.
She grabbed him by the arm when he prepared to get out. “You’re not going without me.” Even in the near darkness he could see the determination glittering in her eyes.
“All right.” His gaze dropped to her lips and he wondered how it would feel to kiss her…right now. A warning went off inside him. He was skating much too close to the thin ice. He had to back off. “Make sure you do exactly as I say. There might not be time to tell you twice.”
“I can do that.”
If she’d noticed him staring at her mouth, she didn’t let on unless he counted the flicker of irritation that flared in her eyes.
Good. One of them needed to show some self-control.
Mentally kicking himself, Todd climbed out of the car. You’d think a guy with a psychology degree would see this kind of thing coming. But he hadn’t. He’d assumed a certain level of immunity, just like in the past. He could do anything, fool anyone, without ever losing sight of his ultimate goal. What the hell had happened to all that objectivity? Where was the nonchalant guy who could walk into any situation and walk away unscathed?
Not once in his life had he danced close enough to the flame to get burned. He’d always been too smart. Was his need to prove himself at the Colby Agency affecting his good judgment?
Serena met him at the front of the car. “How do you want to do this?”
Todd had already considered the clinic and the best route of entry. The last of the staff had left a few minutes ago and the cleaning crew would arrive soon. That was their ticket inside.
“First we wait.”
She folded her arms over her chest and glared at him as if he’d suggested they climb back into the car and have a quick meeting of something other than their minds.
“We’ve been waiting. I thought the idea was to get inside after the last of the staff left for the day.”
He adopted her stance. “And what do you propose we do about the security system?” Braddock would likely have a solution for that problem were he here. As if to punctuate the thought, Todd’s cell vibrated.
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”
He hadn’t, either, until he’d noticed the sign declaring the property protected by a local and popular security company. But she didn’t need to know that.
“So what do we do?” She surveyed the one-story clinic as if it were the White House, its boundaries near impenetrable.
“We wait for the cleaning crew to arrive. According to Chicago P.D.’s report, the cleaning lady found Dr. Wright about an hour after close of business.” Todd looked at his watch. “If that’s the usual routine, then we’re ten minutes away from the crew’s arrival.”
“What if they’re not coming tonight?” She glanced at the well-lit building once more. “What if they don’t usually come until much later?”
“Then we’ll just wait longer.” He had to calm her down. Panic and hysteria were two things they definitely didn’t need right now. “But we have to get into place just in case.”
The doctor’s car had been towed to the forensics lab and though Todd felt certain the clinic had been gone over with a fine-tooth comb today, only the parking area would be considered the primary crime scene.
Todd’s plan included waiting amid the shrubbery near the side entrance. He’d noticed when he sized up the situation that the rear exit was marked Emergency Exit Only, which meant most of the going and coming was done at the side entrance.
She didn’t argue this time. Not even when he took her hand and started strolling along the sidewalk as if they were nothing more than a couple out for a breath of fresh air. They walked a block past the clinic and then doubled back. Unfortunately the weather had decided to stop cooperating and a cool drizzle started to fall.
Maybe it was the rain or the company Todd soon became aware they had, but Serena stayed close behind him as he weaved between the buildings that backed up to one another. The alley was wide, but between the trash cans, Dumpsters and the lack of efficient lighting, the going was nerve-racking. Who would have thought that with all the alleys in this city a whole community of homeless folks would have decided this particular one was the best location in town.
Various-size boxes had been confiscated for makeshift temporary housing. A foot popped out from a disintegrating box they passed and Serena scooted closer to him. Todd held very still until the man had settled. He wasn’t afraid of a physical altercation—he just didn’t want to risk stirring up a ruckus.
He nodded to Serena and started toward their destination once more. When they’d reached the end of the block beyond the rear entrance to Wright’s clinic, he ushered her into the hiding place nature and lush landscaping provided. The rain wasn’t that bad, just enough to get damp.
“What if they see us?” Serena whispered as she attempted to see beyond the thick canopy of perennial greenery.
“As long as we keep still and quiet,” he warned, “no one will notice us.”
She didn’t like it, but she shut up.
Todd watched the side entrance and the section of the parking area he could see from their hiding place. For about three minutes he felt confident he would get through this without incident, but then she shifted ever so slightly and the scent of her shampoo filled his nostrils.
The memory of how those silky strands had felt sliding through his fingers zinged him unmercifully. The urge to touch her…to trail his fingers along her smooth skin…expanded so quickly inside him that it was all he could do to keep his hands to himself.
“Here they are.” She turned toward him abruptly and even in the darkness somehow she sensed that he stared at her like a starving man. He felt her tremble.
“Yeah….” He moistened his lips. “Stay here.” He moved in front of her before he could do or say anything else utterly stupid.
He shook it off and focused on the three people, two women and one man, chatting and gathering their supplies from the van they’d parked near the side entrance.
Todd retrieved the business card he would need from his interior jacket pocket and braced in preparation for his next move. When all three had moved to enter the building, first the two females, then the man, he eased from the concealing shrubbery.
As the door closed behind the grou
p, he moved up next to it, caught the knob with one hand and slid the business card into place with the other. The door closed, but the card kept the latch from catching. He flattened against the side of the building and listened for any warning that his move had been noted. The footsteps and sounds of voices continued to diminish as they moved away from the entrance.
He motioned for Serena to join him. The building’s exterior lighting provided sufficient illumination for her to see his intentions. She moved out of the bushes and hurried cautiously to where he waited.
Pulling her close to him, he murmured next to her ear, “Once we’re inside, we’ll need to find a place to hide near this entrance.”
She pulled back and looked up at him, the worry in her eyes making his chest feel tight. “Can’t we just look for the files and get out?”
He shook his head. “Too risky. We’ll lay low until they’re gone, then we’ll have free run of the place.”
“But how will we get out without tripping the alarm?” She moved her head side to side. “This isn’t a good idea. We could be stuck in there all night, only to be caught tomorrow morning.”
A smile tickled his lips. “Don’t worry. I have a plan.”
Serena wasn’t sure she completely believed him, but she didn’t have a lot of options here.
“Let’s rock and roll.”
Holding her breath, she moved up behind him as he eased open the door.
Any second now she expected someone to scream or for sirens to blare in the distance. She had to be out of her mind to do this.
If they could find Molly safe…it would all be worth it.
With that in mind, she followed the man she alternately disliked and lusted after into the clinic. She blinked at the bright fluorescent lighting. Thank God no one loitered in the corridor.
