Hard Evidence

by Pamela Clare

  God, what if she'd shot him? What if she'd killed an innocent man?

  She didn't want to think about that.

  Then again, Mr. Darcangelo was anything but innocent.

  Certainly, she was relieved to know he was a cop and not a killer. She would have been appalled to think she'd responded like that to the kiss of a cold-blooded murderer.

  God, the man could kiss!

  Had she ever been kissed like that before? No, she hadn't. Not in her life. She'd never found kissing to be that pleasurable, perhaps because she'd always been afraid of what might follow. She'd vowed not to make the mistakes her mother had made and had kept men at arm's length, waiting for the one man she knew she could trust and love.

  She thought she'd met him during her junior year in college. A theater major with a poet's face, Scott Chambers had seemed to fall as desperately in love with her as she was with him. It was only after she'd slept with him that he'd confessed he'd always wanted to have sex with a true blonde. Not long after, he'd taken up with a dance major, leaving Tessa to wonder how she could have misjudged him so completely.

  That was seven years ago, and she hadn't been near a man since. The last man she'd seen naked was Lissy's husband, Will, and that had been an accident, though not an unwelcome one from Tessa's point of view. Will was a former college football star and had the body of a god.

  It wasn't that Tessa didn't want sex. She fantasized about it. Wished for it. Yearned for it. But never again did she want to find herself lying on some man's sheets feeling used and empty and alone. Besides, her fantasies of sex had been much more satisfying than the act itself. Except for one kiss this afternoon.

  Was she truly so sex starved that she'd responded?

  Like a plucked string.

  Not only did she know it. He knew it, too. He must know it.

  Tessa closed her eyes and tried to remember every detail— the pressure of his lips, the probing heat of his tongue, the hardness of his muscles. She felt a flutter in her belly, felt her nipples tighten, and found herself touching her lips as if to bring back the sensation.

  But it hadn't really been a kiss, had it? '

  It was nothing more than a way to shut you up, girl.

  At least he hadn't used a sock or duct tape.

  Of course, she didn't like the fact he'd dug into her private past. He knew things about her that she'd never shared with anyone. Whenever her friends asked about her family, she evaded, letting them assume she was from Georgia. She'd worked hard to lose her Texas accent and adopt the more genteel tones of Georgia. She'd struggled to pay her way through college, putting in sleepless nights at the school paper. Then she'd fought her way up the ladder at the Morning News. Along the way, she'd stopped being Tessa Bates—the poor little white-trash girl with no daddy—and had become Tessa Novak.

  Never once had she looked back.

  She didn't want to look back, didn't want to remember the poverty, the shame, the isolation. Trying to sleep while Grandpa and Mama fought all night and the police came. Going to school in clothes that her neighbors had given to the Salvation Army. Coming home to find Grandpa passed out on the floor after spending the day with Jack Daniel's. Getting caught stealing books from school because she wanted so much to read. Wondering if what the other kids told her was true—that Grandpa was also her daddy.

  Tessa's mama is her sister—and her mama. That's what my mama says.

  The rumors hadn't been true. Her mother had assured her of that. But Tessa no longer gave a damn who her father was. She didn't need to steal books to read, nor did she wear castoffs. She bought what she needed with money she'd earned through hard work. She wasn't running from her past, as Mr. Darcangelo had seemed to imply, taunting her with her former last name. No, she'd worked her way free of it. -

  Outside her apartment in the street, a police siren wailed, making her jump. The sound of it sent chills down her spine. The victim's advocate had told her she might be on edge for a while. Unfortunately, the victim's advocate had been right.

  Feeling strangely vulnerable in the bathtub, Tessa released the drain with her toes, then stood, wrapped herself with a towel, and finished getting ready for bed. Drowsy from the wine, she checked to make sure her door was locked, then she slipped beneath her down comforter. But it was a long time before she fell asleep.

  * * *

  Julian worked through his aikido routine in the dim light of his basement, sweat running down his face and bare chest. Instincts were his first line of defense. His body was his second. He trained it, kept it in fighting shape, just as he did any other weapon.

  Aikido also cleared his head, helped him think. He ought to be sleeping; apart from a catnap this morning, he'd been awake for more than forty-eight hours. But he was too tense for that, his thoughts tangled in long blond hair. He needed to stop thinking about Tessa Novak. He had a job to do, and it didn't include doing her.

  Too damned bad, really.

  He shifted his mind to Burien—again.

  Zoryo'd had little to add to what he'd already told them, claiming not to have seen Burien in years. But the old man at the hospital had been more helpful than Julian had expected. He'd been able to describe the girls—and the middle-aged woman who'd acted as their guard dog—in some detail. Simms had guessed the girls lived nearby, and the details he'd shared had fit what Julian already knew about Burien's operations: he kept the girls in small groups and dominated them through terror, using a mixture of brutal punishments and small rewards— like candy.

  The bastard was clearly using Denver as his home base now, but where was he? He'd been the brains of the operation before, calling the shots from Los Angeles, while Garcia had handled the supply problem in Mexico and Pembroke had overseen transportation. They'd had some cribs in the Denver area but never any major interests, keeping mainly to border states. Although Operation Liberate had brought down both Garcia and Pembroke, Julian had lost control of his emotions and moved early, enabling Burien to escape.

  Julian had come close to losing control of the situation today, too. One minute he'd been on top of things, the next he'd been staring down the barrel of a .22. He had to give the woman credit. It had taken a lot of courage for her to pull a weapon on him. He outweighed her by a good eighty pounds and stood almost a foot taller, and still she'd tried to defend herself.

  That wasn't the only way she'd surprised him. He'd clamped his mouth over hers to silence her, had thrust his tongue between her lips to stifle her scream—and she'd melted. That was the only word for it. Her entire body had softened in his arms, her resistance gone.

  And then she'd kissed him back, her response sweetly sensual and so arousing that he'd forgotten the kiss was just a tactical maneuver and had found himself enjoying it. He'd kept kissing her even after it was no longer necessary, savoring the feminine feel of her, inhaling her scent, feeling satisfaction at her little gasp when he'd sucked on her lip.

  Damn it, Darcangelo! Stay on task!

  He stopped, crossed the room to his water bottle, and drank deeply. Then he went back to the center of the room and started his routine again.

  The trick was finding Burien, getting to him without him knowing anyone was coming. It seemed no matter how close Julian got, the son of a bitch was one step ahead. He was as hard to grab hold of as smoke, but he wasn't a master at disguises or a linguistic genius. He was an arrogant thug with an obvious Russian accent. Wherever he was, he would stick out. He knew this and lived a reclusive life, using his minions to deal with the outside world. Utterly without pity, he controlled his sordid empire through fear.

  S-stay away from me! I-I saw you that night! I know you were there!

  Julian knew Tessa had been terrified of him, certain he was a killer come to kill again. No doubt that explained her reaction to his kiss. Danger was an aphrodisiac for some women. God knows, it had been for Margaux. She'd loved to fuck after a bust and had liked it rough. There'd never been tenderness between them, nothing sweet, nothing sof
t. She'd been drawn to him because of his dark past—and because her father, an FBI legend, hadn't approved of him.

  The thrill of danger—surely, that's all it had been. Tessa had felt his .357, had thought he meant to use it, and when he'd kissed her, her fear had transformed into lust.

  That's fine for her, but what's your excuse?

  His next kick found him off balance. He stopped, swore.

  Did he need an excuse to enjoy kissing a pretty woman?

  Yeah, he did—if it caused him to lose focus. He was here to stop Burien, not to diddle some headline-chasing journalist, no matter how soft and sexy she was.

  I watched that girl die! She begged me to help her, and I couldn't! But I'm going to do my best to help her now.

  Her eyes had misted with tears when she'd spoken those words, as if she'd really meant them. Julian found himself remembering the stricken look on her face the night of the murder. Something stirred in his gut. Understanding? Sympathy? Protectiveness?

  He took another deep drink of water, washed the feeling away.

  Ms. Novak was single—he knew that now. The man who'd picked her up that night was the husband of a friend—a state senator who'd been exonerated of murder some time back. But even if Julian hadn't been on a case, he wouldn't have tried to get her into bed. He could tell she placed complicated expectations on sex. She wasn't the kind of woman who would come—and then go. She'd want love and commitment. She'd want the white picket fence.

  Not that Julian hadn't wanted those things, too, once upon a time. He'd fallen head over heels in love with the young Mexican prostitute his father had paid to fuck him for his fifteenth birthday—a romance that had lasted until he'd walked in and found her screwing his father. Then, many years later, he'd thought himself in love with Margaux, but in retrospect, their time together seemed more like a triple-X flick than a real relationship. He'd been an idiot to mistake it for anything other than what it had been—sexual obsession.

  Since then, Julian had limited himself to women who knew what they wanted and took as much as they gave. No commitments, no attachments.

  No tenderness. Nothing soft. Nothing sweet.

  No, he had no business even thinking about Tessa Novak. The kind of life he lived wasn't meant to be shared.

  He set the water aside, walked across the center of the room to start his routine again, and was almost relieved when his phone rang.

  It was Chief Irving.

  "It's Zoryo," he said. "Get to the jail now."

  Julian grabbed his shirt and ran for the stairs.

  Chapter 5

  "Sonofabitch!" Julian slammed his fist against the steel railing of the gurney, his head throbbing with rage. "Well, Zoryo, you bastard, you found a way."

  Zoryo didn't respond. He lay on a triage bed, staring at the ceiling, dead. His face was blue and engorged, his throat bruised. His fleshy chest and belly were bare, the tiger tattoo on his chest pale against his blue skin. Red marks on his skin showed where the paddles of the defibrillator had singed him.

  "He must've really wanted to die to pull it off like he did." The crew-cut jail captain, a paper pusher by the name of Willis, stood next to the gurney, arms crossed defensively across his chest. "It took determination."

  "Determination? You sound like you admire him. The man was a stone-cold killer and a baby raper—and you let him escape justice." Julian slipped clenched fists into his pockets, turned his back on the captain—a better option than slamming them into the idiot's face.

  Chief Irving cleared his throat. "You need to understand that Special Agent Darcangelo put in months of hard-core undercover work catching this scum. Zoryo was his best lead on a top-priority case."

  Now that lead was gone. Months of risk and countless hours of pretending to be turned on by the same abominable filth Zoryo enjoyed amounted to nothing but wasted time. Julian's only consolation was that Zoryo's death had been slow.

  The bastard had strangled himself, hanged himself from a height of only three feet. A guard on rounds had found him in his cell, already dead, dangling from a garrote he'd fashioned from his bedsheet and had wrapped around his sink, his knuckles dragging on the floor.

  "I've already spoken with both guards and determined they weren't at fault. They followed standard operating procedure for—"

  "Standard operating procedure?" Julian gave a snort of disgust, turned to face Willis. "How can you fucking talk about 'procedure' when one of your inmates is dead? Isn't a corpse proof that your procedures were insufficient?"

  Willis's spine grew stiffen "When someone is that set on killing himself—"

  "You watch him like a hawk, for Christ's sake! Why do you think I had him put on suicide watch?" Julian had no use for bureaucrats.

  "There will be a full investigation into this, believe me, and when it's done—"

  "I don't give a damn about your investigation!" Julian pointed toward Zoryo's corpse. "What I need is the information locked in his brain so that I can stop a killer!"

  Then Julian turned and strode out of the infirmary, through the various checkpoints, and out the back door into the well-lit parking lot, his blood at the boiling point. He should have stayed. He should have spent more time questioning Zoryo and less time at the hospital. He should have ordered Zoryo placed in restraints.

  Goddamn it!

  "Darcangelo!" Chief Irving's voice followed him.

  Julian .stopped, turned, and saw Irving hurrying after him as fast as his girth permitted. Too furious and restless to stand still, he paced the empty parking space between two cars, jamming his fists back into his pockets.

  "For what it's worth. I'm sorry. I know how much you put on the line to bring Zoryo in. I know what he meant to you."

  Teeth clenched, Julian met Irving's gaze. "Do you?"

  "Yeah, I do." The old cop gave a stubborn nod. "And I know something else. Beating up on yourself for not preventing this won't change what happened three years ago."

  Julian gave a snort of disgust. "If I'd have done my job three years ago—"

  "Zoryo would still have been out there doing what he liked to do!" Irving's voice carried across the parking lot, got the attention of a couple cops who stood talking beside their cruisers in the yellow glow of a streetlight. "At least you got him off the streets. If he really was as important to Burien as you think he was, you've dealt Burien a serious blow. How long do you think before Burien realizes Zoryo is missing?"

  "A few days, a week at best."

  "How will he react?"

  "He'll close ranks, alter his routine, replace Zoryo with someone else."

  There was always someone else. No matter how many sick bastards Julian put away there always seemed to be another.

  "When you bring Burien down, you'll bring the rest with him. Now go home and get some sleep—and that's an order. You've been pushing it too damned hard." Irving clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Tomorrow we've got something else to discuss."

  Feeling a weariness that went beyond lack of sleep, Julian turned toward his truck. "What's that?"

  'Tessa Novak."

  Tessa got up after an almost sleepless night, showered, and drove to the nearest coffee shop, wondering if it would seem extreme if she asked for five shots of espresso. She settled on her usual three and nudged her way through traffic to the paper, trying not to think about the shooting—or Julian Darcan-gelo and his devastating mouth.

  Once at the paper, she sipped her way back to life while reading through press releases and e-mails at her desk. Safety tips for Halloween. Twelve arrests at a prairie dog protest in Boulder. Cops donating time to a local battered women's shelter. The arrest of a parole officer who…

  Tessa read through the press release in disgust. "God, I've heard a lot of weird stuff, but this beats it all. A parole officer was arrested on suspicion of stalking. Do you want to know what he was doing?"

  Sophie looked up from her own notes. "Will we still be friends if I say no?"

  'The guy was ejaculat
ing into black pumps—you know, women's shoes—and leaving them in the bedrooms of his female parolees."

  For a moment there was silence in the newsroom. Then it exploded with a chorus of female moans. "Ewww!"

  Matt adjusted his pathetic wrinkled tie. "Can you imagine that first phone call to a lawyer. 'Hi, can you help me? I'm in the pokey.' 'What's the charge?' 'Jerking off into shoes and leaving them in women's bedrooms.'"

  "You think that's strange? There was this man on the Rez who… well…" Kat paused. "One word: sheep."

  Thank God it was Friday.

  But the day only got weirder.

  Tom was in a bad mood because he'd argued with his girlfriend, who, much to everyone's amusement, was Kara's free-spirited mother, Lily McMillan. He bit off everyone's heads during the meeting, until finally Syd asked him to snap out of it The two of them got into a shouting match that ended when Kat got up and walked out of the room.

  'This isn't productive," she said simply before the door swung shut behind her.

  And the meeting was over.

  Tessa made a few phone calls about the parole officer, then she wrote up a quick six-inch story, finishing in time to have lunch with Sophie.

  They chose salads—really just piles of wilted leaves with cucumber slices and cherry tomatoes thrown on top—and sat in their favorite corner of the cafeteria.

  "Do you think Kara knows how vital her mother is to the smooth functioning of the newsroom?" Sophie asked, dousing her leaves with a packet of Italian dressing. "Maybe we should call her and beg her to ask her mother to make up with Tom, start the Lily McMillan Fund, or something."

  Tessa drizzled ranch on hers. "I think Kara spends most of her time trying not to think about it. How would you feel if your mother were sleeping with Tom Trent?"

  "I'd say she deserved hazard pay." Sophie picked up her fork and jabbed a tomato.

  They talked over their news stories while they ate and were soon joined by Holly, who also had a salad, and Lissy, who had a thick, juicy cheeseburger that looked like sin and smelled like heaven.