“Of course she has,” Jazz replied. “She was over the moon when Adroit bought the station. WMFL is a Metro-Net affiliate and now that Adroit owns the station, Jess is certain that Yellowstone—the conglomerate that owns the network—will want to keep Adroit happy and pay more attention to the Miami station.”
Whatever story Jessica was working on, it was one that would get her noticed by the higher ups at Adroit and Yellowstone. That had been clear from her e-mails. “So who’s Parrish?” she asked.
“The owner of Adroit.”
“The owner?” Jazz raised both eyebrows. “The guy that just bought her TV station hired a bodyguard for Jess because of an overzealous fan?”
“This one’s gone past overzealous. As I said, Jessica has been receiving threatening letters.”
Jazz shook her head. “That’s so weird. She never mentioned that to me.”
“Are you close?”
A pang of guilt shimmied through her. They certainly loved each other, but distance and differences had taken their toll. “We’re close enough that she’d tell me about a threatening fan.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to worry you.”
“That’s possible,” she agreed. “She’s pretty self-sufficient.” Which was why Jazz had jumped at the opportunity to be the one providing assistance for a change.
“Something is keeping your sister,” he said. “Have you considered all the possibilities?”
“Jessica’s late, that’s all.” Even as she said it, a clammy finger of apprehension clutched her. The words Jessica and late didn’t occupy the same sentence. “If she thought it was something to worry about, she would have told me.”
“Has Jessica recently broken up with someone?”
“On the contrary,” Jazz said without thinking.
He raised his eyebrows, interested. “She’s dating someone?” Was that another fact that didn’t make it into his dossier?
“I don’t know how serious it is.” But she could visualize the words Jessica had written not so long ago. I’ve met someone amazing, Jazz. He could change my life. He’s smart, connected, and, best of all, he has a heart of gold. The “best of all” part had really stuck with her.
“What about work? Is she working on anything in particular?”
“Actually, yes.” Jazz said. “And I’m sure that’s why I can’t get hold of her. She’d turn her phone off during an interview with a source.”
“A source for what?”
He asked entirely too many questions. That was her job. “I thought bodyguards stood at the door with their arms crossed, listening to an ear transmitter.”
He grinned. “Not the one you got.”
“Me?” She laughed. “I don’t need a bodyguard, pal. I think I’ve proven that I can defend myself.”
“I had you on the floor in three seconds.”
“You couldn’t have kept me there.”
“You were pinned and…writhing.”
The way he said it sent a rush of heat to her face. “I was not writhing. I was defending myself.”
His gaze slid down her body, doing nothing to cool off the hot flash. “Remind me to teach you how to disengage, not stimulate, your attacker.”
She’d stimulated him? Her throat went dry and she pushed herself out of the chair. “Consider yourself disengaged, Mr. Alex Romero. Nice of you to come and protect my sister, but since she’s not here and I don’t need you, why don’t you mosey along now? I’m sure she’ll show up any minute and if not, I can track her down. I’m pretty good at that; I do it for a living.”
“I’ve been hired to be here.” He crossed his ankles and spread his arms across the back of the sofa.
“So you said. When Jessica gets in, I’ll have her people call your people and if she agrees, you can protect her. Although I have to warn you, she probably won’t want you any more than I do.”
He just stared at her, a teasing little smile pulling at his lips.
“I mean, she won’t want your services.” Jeez, the guy was distracting just sitting there. Imagine if she had him on top of her again. “Well.” She stuffed her hands deep into her pockets. “Good-bye.”
“I’m not leaving.”
God save her from macho control freaks. “Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.” He gave her a nearly imperceptible shake of his head, just enough for one shiny lock to almost cover his eye. God really save her from macho control freaks with great hair. “I’m either going to find her, or wait here for her.”
“All right. Let’s find her.” She glanced around the room. “Let’s start with her computer. I bet she keeps her calendar on it.”
“She has a laptop on the dresser in her bedroom.” He stood and towered over her.
“Have you been through this whole apartment?”
“Would you like a tour?”
Before she could answer, the phone on the end table rang. Thank God. Jazz swooped over and picked it up. “Hello?”
“Where the frick were you tonight?”
The man’s question and tone sent a shiver through her. “I’m sorry, who is this?”
“It’s me, Ollie.” He sounded put off that she wouldn’t know. Could this be Mr. Amazing? All Jess had said was that there was someone new, someone special.
“Are you sick or something?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you call when you couldn’t come in for the six o’clock?”
Another shiver went through her. Her sister had missed a newscast? Never. “What happened?”
“Are you kidding? Jon Boy stepped in faster than we could change the TelePrompTer. I gotta go; we’re getting the chopper out to a small plane crash in the Everglades. But listen: Metro-Net is knocking, and I think it’s in your best interest to be the one who answers the door. Just in case, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“They’ve scheduled a live satellite feed with Rodriguez on American Sunrise, but he doesn’t want to do a video-hosted interview. He wants a real person across from him asking questions. Enter Jessica Adams, eh?”
American Sunrise was Metro-Net’s hot new national morning show in New York—the one that still needed a permanent anchor. But who was Rodriguez, and where was Jessica? “What exactly is the segment?”
“They asked the mayor to talk about the Latin American global conference that starts here next week. I don’t care if you have flippin’ appendicitis. Get your can over here tomorrow morning before Jon Boy sets up camp in the studio, all right?”
What would Jessica say? “Of course I’ll be there.”
“You up to speed on the conference?”
“I’ll need some more information.” Like what the hell it was. “Could you get me some background?”
“I’ll e-mail you a link right now. You’ll need about five hard-hitting questions. Keep it global, not local. Forget the Miami impact, think world economy, U.S. trade with Latin America, blah blah blah. You’ve got three minutes. They’re running it as the second segment after the seven o’clock news. Get here an hour early. We go live at seven sixteen.”
“A.M?” she almost croaked.
He laughed. “Very funny, doll. See you then.”
As Jazz hung up the phone, her gaze shifted to the bodyguard, who’d moved closer to her to hear the conversation.
“So she didn’t make the six o’clock broadcast either,” he said simply.
Good God, could something have happened to Jessica? Otherwise why would she miss a broadcast, and not call when she knew Jazz would be here waiting for her?
“She’ll be here any minute,” she insisted. “Because she has to be at the studio tomorrow morning for a chance to be on network TV.”
Another possibility suddenly took shape. Jessica had said her window of opportunity was brief, that she’d have to do her story research as soon as Jazz arrived. She must be interviewing a source earlier than planned—that had to be the answer.
“What if she isn’t here any minute?” Alex asked.
Jazz swallowed. “Then I’m interviewing Mayor Rodriguez on network television tomorrow morning at seven sixteen A.M.”
Alex cooked the steak himself. It was nearly eleven and by then, Jazz Adams had demonstrated an array of personal skills from brilliant deductive reasoning to some impressive hacking techniques using a laptop she’d retrieved, along with some luggage, from her rental car. However, nothing indicated she was interested in cooking.
Sitting cross-legged and barefoot on her sister’s bed, she looked up from an open laptop when he tapped on the door announcing dinner.
“I’m not hungry,” she answered.
“Then sit with me and we’ll go over what we have so far.”
“We have nothing,” she replied. “No calendar, no information, no leads. In the meantime, I have to chat intelligently with the mayor tomorrow.” She scooped her hair into a tousled auburn mess. “Did you know that Bolivia may be sitting on the second biggest natural gas reserves in the whole hemisphere?”
“Are you serious?”
“And yet the people are convinced they have no resources.”
“I meant are you serious about doing this interview.”
She gave him a “get real” look. “That’s the whole reason I’m here: to pretend to be Jessica.” She tapped a few keys, closed the laptop, and bounded off the bed in one graceful move. “I guess I could eat something. What did you make?”
“Your sister left steak and salad. For two. Which leads me to believe she expected to be home tonight to entertain you.” He placed one arm on the doorjamb to block her way. “What do you mean, you’re here to pretend to be Jessica?”
She ducked under his arm and slipped past him. “I’m covering for her while she does something else.”
He watched her walk away. The loose military pants did nothing to diminish the sway of her backside. When she disappeared around the corner, he followed.
He had to remember whom he’d been hired to protect. If Jessica Adams was doing “something else,” then so was he. “What will she be doing while you cover for her?”
“She’s working on a special project.” She stood in the dining room alcove, surveying the table. “You made this? Just now?”
“Your sister did most of the preliminary work. And the table was already set.”
She looked up, a little surprised, when he pulled out a chair for her. “She’s too much, isn’t she? Talented, successful, respected, and she can cook.”
“That was mentioned in her dossier. But it didn’t indicate that she was on a special project. In fact, I got the impression she never did any investigative reporting.” He sat next to her.
“She doesn’t. And that’s why this one is important.” Lifting a glass of ice water, she made a mock toast. “To our missing hostess.”
“She left two wineglasses out, all ready for action,” he said. “But no wine.”
She shrugged and shook out a linen napkin. “Listen, I don’t mean to sound callous, but my sister’s a big girl and she’s working on a hush-hush story. If some wacko was really scaring her, she’d have told me. I know that like I know my name. She would never have suggested I stand in for her if she thought it would put either of us in danger.”
Alex cut his steak. “I should think having a novice stand in for an interview televised all over the country would qualify as dangerous—to her career.”
“We weren’t expecting network time,” she said, without a note of defense in her voice. “But I can do it. I’ve done television news before.”
“I thought you were a PI.”
“I am. Now.” She flicked the salad with her fork. “Look at this junk. The lettuce in California is way better.” Selecting a cherry tomato, she continued, “I decided to put my investigative skills to work in a different field. But I did TV reporting and news up until a year ago.”
“In San Francisco? That’s a sizeable market.”
She smiled. “In Fresno. Not such a sizeable market.”
“Why did you quit?”
“I sucked at it.”
He looked questioningly at her. “Yet you think you can handle your sister’s job?”
“I didn’t suck on the air,” she said. “I sucked at the politics. So I got involved with a start-up PI firm, and found I really liked the business. Much better than all that backstabbing in TV news. And that was in a tiny market.” She took a bite and waved her empty fork toward the view of Miami while she chewed. “I can only imagine what goes on in a place like this.”
“Your sister doesn’t tell you?”
She shrugged. “She’s so far past that stuff. I mean, she blew through every lower level job in television. In the time I went from Lubbock—now there was a dump—to Fresno, she propelled herself through four markets and ended up in Miami in the top anchor job.”
“Then she must have made some enemies along the way. Perhaps her ‘stalker’ isn’t a fan, but a jealous coworker.”
“It’s hard to hate Jess. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
He couldn’t help but smile at her honesty. “You’re identical twins, correct?”
She grinned. “Yep. Same DNA. Proof positive that ambition and discipline are not programmed in the gene code.”
He had no idea how ambitious she was, but no one studied self-defense that thoroughly without discipline. “Why does she need a stand-in? Isn’t working on a story part of her job?”
“If anybody at the station got wind of it, she could lose the exclusivity and ownership of the story. If I show up as Jessica, no one knows she’s off investigating.”
“Surely someone at the station knows. Her supervisor? A news director?” She couldn’t be working in a complete vacuum. That didn’t make sense.
“I don’t know,” Jazz said. “In her last e-mail, she was adamant that I not tell anyone who I am. Whatever she’s discovered, she thinks it’ll guarantee her national exposure, which is what she wants. And she doesn’t get a lot of support for investigative reporting. They want her in the studio, looking perfect, reading news somebody else wrote and being the ‘face of Channel Five.’”
“Doesn’t sound very challenging.”
“It’s not. That’s why she wants to get to network.” She rolled her eyes. “Speaking of challenging, I hope tomorrow morning’s interview is not.”
“You’ll be figured out in five minutes,” he predicted.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Romero.”
Alex set down his fork and pushed the chair back on two legs, releasing a long sigh. He had no idea where the principal was, and he could very well end up protecting the wrong sister. How the hell would he explain this to Lucy? “The whole thing is juvenile, if you ask me.”
She sliced him with a silvery gaze. “I didn’t ask you.”
“You don’t think anyone who works with her won’t figure out that you’re not her? It didn’t take me very long.”
“You caught me off guard.”
He let the chair hit the ground. “That was the idea.”
She rested her elbows on the table and watched him cut another piece of steak. “I don’t suppose I can get rid of you by tomorrow morning.”
Now, there was something he didn’t hear often from a beautiful woman. “Why would you want to? Jessica’s boss hired personal protection for her. If she shows up at work without a bodyguard in tow, won’t Parrish know something’s up? If you are hellbent on keeping this secret, you better think more deviously.” He deliberately let his gaze drop over that lovely cleavage. “And you’ll have to do a wardrobe makeover.”
She didn’t flinch or blush under his gaze. “Does that mean you’ll go along with this?”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin as he considered the consequences. If he announced to Lucy that he had no real principal, Parrish might pull him off the assignment. With the current shakiness of his job security, he didn’t want to create any white water. “For the time being. I’ve been hired to protect Jessica Adams. I’m most interested in finding her. At
her office, I might be able to figure out where she is.”
“I don’t think it would be appropriate for her bodyguard to dig through her desk and computer files.”
“No, but you can.” He eyed her untouched plate. All she’d eaten was a few bites of the limp salad. “What’s the story she’s after?”
“I don’t know.” At his skeptical look, she added, “Really, she didn’t tell me. Just that it was mega-juicy and breakthrough.”
“If it’s network attention she craves, you’d think nothing could keep her from tomorrow morning’s opportunity to interview the mayor of Miami on American Sunrise. Doesn’t that worry you?”
She dropped her chin onto her knuckles and flashed him a fake smile. “Do you live to be the devil’s advocate?”
“Someone has to.” He pointed to her steak. “Aren’t you going to eat that?”
“I’d love to, but I really don’t like it.”
He nodded, his own plate still full. “For a gourmet cook, she overmarinated.”
Jazz shook her head, a slight frown on her face. “So, tell me about this crazy fan. Have you seen these letters she’s received?”
He stood and headed into the guest bedroom, where he’d left his bag and files. “I’ll get the copies of the letters and show you.”
While she put the dishes in the sink, he spread six letters over the counter. Wiping her hands on a towel, she glanced at them. “I was picturing words cut out of magazines, all different sizes, like in the movies.”
Alex stepped behind her, trapping her between him and the counter, forcing her to stop and read the words. “These were generated on a computer. Standard font. Standard printer. Standard ink. Same for the envelopes. Postmark was downtown Miami, the same zip code as the TV station.”
Her body fit right into his, the memory of her derriere pumping against him still fresh. He concentrated on the letters instead of the warmth of her female curves.
The notes were short, no more than a few lines, but each one grew more ominous. The first one read, “I love to watch you,” then the author moved to “You turn me on,” and “I have to taste you.” The last letter was the most explicit. “I’m going to fuck you while you scream at my camera.”
Kill Me Twice Page 3
