“I’m not admitting anything, either,” she replied. She snuggled deeper in her pillow and tried not to think about how much she loved the kisses in question.
“Aah, Sue. You’re killing me.”
“If I’m killing you, why…why didn’t you call me four months ago?” Her stomach muscles tightened while she awaited his response.
“Maybe I lost your number.” His tone had lost its playfulness and now sounded cautious.
“Maybe I’m not blonde enough to fall for that.” She fought a wave of disappointment.
“Is this why you won’t sleep with me?”
“No,” she said.
But then it hit her. In the beginning, his not calling her was exactly why she’d fought against getting involved with him. He’d rejected her; she didn’t fancy letting him do it again. But now…now she couldn’t give herself over to this until she knew they had a fighting chance of making it work. If she made love to Jason and he just walked out…Heck, she might be like her mom and go to bed for a year. She’d barely managed to survive Collin’s betrayal. How would she survive Jason’s?
“It’s late,” she said.
“It’s not too late.” His tone was seductive again. “Talk to me.”
“Only if you tell me honestly why you didn’t call me.”
He didn’t speak. She counted to three.
“Good night.”
She hung up. And while her body yearned to give Jason everything he wanted—yearned for several hours, right up until she fell asleep—she knew she’d done the right thing. No giving in until she knew this was real.
“Three minutes. Three minutes is all I ask,” Jason said. He looked up at Detective Brian Peters, who was standing outside the door where the doctor’s wife waited.
He had gotten a call at eight that morning from Detective Reyes, Peters’s partner, telling him that they’d found the doc’s wife and were bringing her in for questioning. Jason had contacted his friend Danny, a patrol cop, to stay with Sue while he headed to the precinct. But no sooner had he hung up, Sue had gotten another call from her stalker. And they’d gotten a trace. Unfortunately, the stalker was calling from what was probably one of the last existing pay phones in the city. Jason had a few cars check it out and, as soon as Danny arrived, rushed to check it out himself. Not that he’d expected to find anything. And they hadn’t. However, the timing meant the caller couldn’t be the doctor’s wife.
Then again, maybe she’d hired someone to do it for her and throw off suspicion. Jason wasn’t going to leave any stone unturned. This freak stalking Sue had proven that he wouldn’t stop at murder. Which meant Jason had to stop him…or her.
Detective Peters squared his shoulders. “This isn’t your case, Dodd. Why do you want to question her?” The guy was being a hard-ass.
“Someone’s stalking a friend, and I think that woman knows something. Besides, I’ve already done some research.” Jason wasn’t above bribery. “Let me talk to her, and I’ll give you everything I’ve got.”
The man folded his arms across his chest but gave a nod of acquiescence. “You owe me.”
The two of them walked into the room where the doctor’s wife sat waiting. “Mrs. Everts?” Jason said.
“When are you going to let me see my husband?” The woman shifted in her chair as she spoke. Jason noted her feminine voice. If she’d been doing the earlier calls, she’d done a damn good job at disguising it.
“You didn’t know he’d been shot?”
“If I’d known he’d been shot, I ‘d have been at the hospital.”
Jason turned a chair around and straddled it. “Where were you last night?”
“My son and I were at a hotel.”
“And why were you at a hotel?”
The woman blinked. “My husband and I had an argument.”
“About what?” Detective Peters asked from the corner of the room.
Her gaze shifted. “A silly argument.”
“Humor me,” Jason said.
The woman’s lips went white around the edges. “It’s none of your business.”
Jason stood and moved closer. Leaning palms down on the table, he met her gaze. “It is if you want to convince us that you didn’t shoot him.”
“Me?” Her brown eyes widened. “If you want to find the guilty party, go talk to the little blonde bitch he’s screwing!”
The muscle over Jason’s left brow started to tick. “So, you argued about his girlfriend.”
“Yes. My husband has a problem keeping his pants zipped.”
“Is that why you shot him? You lost your head, and—”
“I didn’t shoot him!”
Jason reared back. “I happen to know that this isn’t the first time your husband has cheated on you.” Jason saw Peters’s eyes widen with interest.
The podiatrist’s wife stiffened. “I didn’t mean to run over that dog. And I didn’t shoot my husband!”
“Dog?” Peters asked.
Jason continued. “He probably said something that set you off…”
“If you want to find out who shot my husband, talk to that whore he’s seeing.”
Jason flinched. “For your information, I was with Miss Finley all last night.”
The woman’s gaze grew wide. “Who is Miss Finley? I’m talking about his office nurse he’s been screwing. Don’t tell me he’s seeing somebody else!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jason sat at his desk, rolling his pencil in his palms. Everything felt off kilter, as if he were on the wrong road, speeding toward a destination that he had no business going to. And he wasn’t just talking about the case.
He couldn’t believe he’d told Sue about being a foster kid. That morning, while he’d been waiting for Danny, Jason had waited to see the look in her eyes—the same look he’d gotten from his teachers and the parents of his classmates. It was the look that said, “Get away. You’re not good enough.” He hadn’t gotten it. But there was always later.
He dropped the pencil. It had been an hour since he’d interviewed the doctor’s wife, so he leaned back in his chair and snatched up the phone to call Danny. “How are things going?” he asked as soon as his friend answered.
“Nothing’s changed since you called thirty minutes ago.”
Jason scowled. “Anyone call her?”
“The phone’s rung off the hook. Her grandfather called. Chase and his wife Lacy called from California. Miss Finley’s agent called. And some Benny guy, a writing partner, called to ask her out on a date. I think you’ve got some competition.” Danny sounded mildly amused passing on this information.
Jason’s tension headache worsened. He said, “I’m going to make some calls and run down a few leads. It’ll be a few hours before I’m back.” He closed his eyes. The truth was it wasn’t the headache bothering him. He missed Sue.
But, no. He couldn’t let himself get that cozy, at-home feeling with anyone. No matter how much he liked or wanted Sue, he couldn’t let himself start feeling as if he belonged. She needed him, and it was okay to protect her, to enjoy being with her, and God knew he wanted to have sex with her. But to feel as if he belonged anywhere was…well, it was dangerous. He’d learned that lesson time and time again. He wasn’t stupid.
“Hey, I’ve got all day,” Danny said. “I owe you big-time for helping my nephew.”
“I didn’t do that much.” Jason picked up the file he’d made for the case and stared at his list of suspects. Whether she’d shot her husband or not, it looked as if the doctor’s wife wasn’t involved in his case. She hadn’t even known about Sue, which meant she wasn’t Sue’s stalker. Since the foot doctor was still in ICU, he pretty much was off the suspect list, too.
“Not true.” Danny’s voice brought Jason’s attention back to the conversation. “He would have gone to prison if you hadn’t gotten hold of him.”
“He’s a good kid.” Jason eyed his list again and decided to visit Sue’s critique partners before heading back. He didn’t like
this Benny Fritz. If Fritz was asking Sue out, that made him even more of a suspect.
Also, Jason had left the chocolate Fritz sent Sue at the lab with a buddy. Without the proper orders to do a serious lab test, his friend had agreed to check for needle marks and such. Maybe Jason would drop by and see if he’d found anything.
Then Jason recalled telling Sue that he’d buy her some chocolate. He should do that, too.
“Besides,” Danny remarked. “Watching her isn’t hard at all.”
Jason went on full alert. “Keep your hands to yourself.”
“Hey, I’m not touching. Just looking. But she seems like a keeper. Smart, funny, beautiful.”
“I thought you said she’d been in the study all morning?”
“Not all morning. We spent about an hour talking. She told me about her new book. Asked my advice about how a cop would handle a few things. Maybe she’ll mention me in her dedication. That’d be cool.”
Sue had asked Danny questions? First Chase and now Danny. Why the hell wasn’t she asking him? He’d even offered!
He passed a hand over his face. “I’ll be back later. Meanwhile…if you touch, you die.”
He hit the off button and started dialing Sue’s home number, wanting to hear her voice. Realizing what he was doing, he hung up. What was he going to say? Hey, I miss you. And why the hell are you asking Danny for advice about your books and not me? And why the hell won’t you sleep with me so I can stop obsessing about you?
Leaning back in his chair, he remembered his phone conversation with Sue from the previous night. He never shared his past with women. As a matter of fact, when they started asking, he started backing off. But he didn’t want to back off with Sue; he hadn’t even gotten started yet.
Gritting his teeth, he decided to channel his pent-up frustration into finding Sue’s stalker. His first stop would be to see if Bob had made headway with Sue’s computer; then he’d swing by the lab to check on the candy, then he’d see if they’d discovered anything on the names he’d called in yesterday. Maybe he’d check and see if the Saturn had been found, too.
Standing, he again looked at his list of suspects, which included a New York editor and an art director. His gaze paused on the name Melissa Covey. Sue’s agent. While Sue seemed adamant that the woman wasn’t involved, Jason had initially suspected her. Sometimes, first impressions were correct.
“Dodd?” Jason’s sergeant popped his head into the office.
“Yeah.”
“Thought you were taking some personal time.”
“I am. Just stopped by to do a few things.”
“Those things involve a Hoke’s Bluff case? Got word from someone that you were invading their territory.”
Jason frowned. Martin. “A friend’s being stalked. I’m just making sure things are done right. Especially when one of the suspects just got shot last night. Our homicide team is on that case.”
“Yeah, I got a call from Brian, too. Overstep your bounds and I’ll have to rein you in.”
“TCP/IP tapping.” Bob said, standing over Sue’s dismantled computer.
Jason ran a hand through his hair. Was everyone purposely trying to piss him off, or were they just getting lucky? “In English, Bob.”
“Well, somebody was knocking on her door and they found it open,” Bob said. “Did you know this thing is ten years old? The components are new. It’s been rebuilt several times.”
“What the hell does an open door mean?” Jason looked at the scattered parts. He hoped Bob knew how to put it all back together.
“It’s called TCP/IP tapping.”
“Lose the computer lingo. Did someone get into her computer, and do we know who it is?”
Bob smirked. “Yes, someone broke into her computer. And no, we won’t be able to find out who it was. They used a local Internet source from a copy store. You might be able to go see if the hired help remembers anyone, but whoever did this knew how to cover their tracks.”
Jason wrote down the information about the copy store. It was a long shot, but it seemed that long shots were all he was going to get. “When can you get the thing back together?”
“I’m going to have to reformat the hard drive. He sent her a time-bomb virus, which wiped out everything. I made a note of her peripherals so I can replace the drivers, and I have a couple of her disks with her backup files, so I can probably replace her apps and files. But she’s got to get anti virus protection and firewall this machine.”
“Load anything you think she needs. I’ll cover it. And hurry,” Jason said.
“So you and her are…” Bob tapped his fists together.
“Yeah,” Jason said. It wasn’t really a lie. As soon as Sue came to her senses, they would be hitting the sheets. Maybe then some of his infatuation would wane.
“She’s cute, but bad taste in lingerie.” Bob laughed and shook his head.
Jason shrugged and headed for his car. There was nothing wrong with Sue’s taste in lingerie; not as far as he could see. Besides, if he ever got close to any exercising-animal pajamas again, she wouldn’t be wearing them that long anyway.
Sue plugged in Jason’s laptop to research antique Welsh dressers. Her heroine in the new book had one in her kitchen, and Sue wanted to check her facts. Deep down she knew that whenever she went on the chase for minuscule details it meant she was just finding a reason not to write. But sometimes you just needed a reason to goof off.
It was almost two o’clock, and she’d pretty much goofed the day away. She hadn’t even finished a scene. She could blame it on not having her computer to work on, and maybe on having a stranger in her house, though Danny seemed nice. For sure she could blame it on someone trying to kill her, or her concern over Paul’s son losing his father. She could attribute it to the fact that she loved watching Jason’s cat with the new kittens. But the truth of her inability to write sat in the pit of her stomach like one of her grandmother’s casseroles. She missed Jason—missed his teasing, missed the heat in his blue eyes. She missed how he made her feel safe. Danny was nice, but…he wasn’t Jason.
Today, Sue had actually brought her purse into her office. Her gun-concealing purse. Maybe this time, if she didn’t have any cans of veggies available, she might remember she had a real weapon. Maybe.
Every time the phone rang, her heart pounded. And it wasn’t because she feared it was the stalker, but because she wanted it to be from the man who hadn’t bothered to call her four months ago. Making the whole thing worse was knowing that Jason had called Danny. Why hadn’t he called her? Just to say hello. Just to…update her on things. It shouldn’t hurt but it did. She grabbed her heart-shaped stress ball and squeezed.
How long would it take him to pick up the phone and dial her number?
Okay, logically, she knew he probably had good reasons for not calling today, but what about four months ago? He had yet to explain that.
Maybe it was just the time apart from him making her question things. Maybe it was remembering how rejected she’d felt when he hadn’t called her four months ago.
Maybe she was scared of being rejected again.
Jason’s computer blinked at her, and Sue pulled up the Internet. Once on his home page she noticed the favorite websites button. What was on Jason Dodd’s favorites list? She moved the mouse, then stopped. What if he had porn sites listed? Was this snooping?
“Oh, Jiminy Cricket!”
She’d already gone through the man’s medicine cabinet. If he had secrets lurking in his computer, he wouldn’t have offered it to her. Right? Besides, most men checked out porn sites. But if he had all big bust websites listed, she’d know to give up. Size B breasts would never satisfy a man into double Ds.
Biting down on her lip, Sue wondered what she might have found if she’d done a search on Collin’s computer. Delete thought! She didn’t want to go there. As she’d explained to her ficus tree during their last horticulture therapy session, Collin was history. But Jason…there was still a chance she mi
ght decide the risk was worth taking with Jason Dodd.
She glanced back at his computer and hit the favorites button. The list appeared. Sue’s mouth fell open. She blinked, not believing it. How could…? Needing proof, she clicked on the first web address.
Jason knocked on Benny Fritz’s apartment door.
Luke, Jason’s buddy in the lab, had claimed the chocolate sent by Sue’s critique partner appeared clean. To prove his point, he’d popped one in his mouth. But poison or no, a good cop followed his gut. Jason’s gut told him to check out Fritz. So here he was. Checking.
His sergeant’s warning rang in his ears, but it wasn’t like talking to a few people could get his ass in trouble. And if it did? Well, his ass would just have to crawl out of trouble.
The door swung open. Jason stared at the young boy who appeared. “Is your father here?”
“He’s writing. I’m not to interrupt unless there’s blood.”
Jason smiled. “Well, this is pretty important.”
“Okay.” The boy closed the door.
The information Jason had dug up on Fritz was hardly incriminating. One outstanding speeding ticket and two calls out to his house for a domestic situation.
The door swung open. “You better not be selling anything,” came a man’s voice.
Jason gave Benny Fritz the once-over. The author stood a few inches shorter than himself, and while fit, leaned more to the thin side. His brown hair was tinged with gray, and Jason supposed that some women liked the GQ/professor look. It was then that Jason realized he was surveying the man as his competition rather than Sue’s possible stalker.
He slipped his hands in his pockets. “My name’s Jason Dodd, Houston PD.”
Fritz opened the door, offering a silent invitation and no apparent worries. Jason entered, but the phone rang. “Excuse me.” Fritz stepped into the study off the living room.
Jason took the opportunity to look around. The place appeared half empty. He remembered Sue telling him that Fritz had recently separated from his wife.
Divorced, Desperate And Dating Page 18
