by Pamela Clare
'The senator's wife." He ought to have known. "You got a ride back?"
"Got a black-and-white set to meet me in twenty at the rental place."
"Good enough." Julian rounded his vehicle, opened the driver's-side door. "Keep me posted. I'll be in touch."
Irving nodded and started back toward the rental. Then he turned to face Julian again. "Hey, Darcangelo. I'm damned glad neither of you got killed. Good work."
Julian acknowledged Irving's words with a nod, then slipped behind the wheel, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror and the little Toyota.
So Tessa's friends wanted a look at him. He would oblige them.
He waited for Irving to leave the lot, then kicked his truck into reverse and backed up until the he was bumper to bumper with the little car, trapping it. He climbed out of his truck and walked up to the driver's window.
With a buzz, the window lowered to reveal four pretty women, one clearly pregnant. They looked guiltily at him, all except for the knockout blonde. Her gaze slid over him in blatant sexual appraisal, a little smile on her face.
And Julian knew.
Tessa had told her friends she'd had sex with him.
His anger at being watched temporarily overcome by an odd surge of male pride, he unzipped his jacket, let his holster show. Then he leaned down and pulled off his shades. "You ladies seen enough?"
Four heads nodded.
The strawberry blonde behind the wheel spoke. "We didn't mean to—"
"Sure you did. But don't worry. I won't hold you responsible."
"It's not Tessa's fault. She has no idea we're here." The woman who spoke had long, dark hair and sat in the front passenger seat. The senator's wife. "You won't take this out on her, will you?"
"Yes, Ms. McMillan, you better believe I will."
Then he turned and walked back to his truck, grinning.
Tessa had planned to wait until she was good and ready to call her mother. But nothing was going as she'd planned, and Tessa knew she couldn't put it off any longer. Her mother's last message—and Sophie's news—made Tessa realize how truly frightened her mother was. It wasn't right to leave her hanging.
Tessa dialed her mother's phone number and paced the living room, a tight feeling in her stomach. What was she supposed to say to her mother after ten years of silence?
The phone rang once. Twice. Three times. She was about to hang up and call it an honest try when her mother answered.
"Hello?"
She hesitated. "Hi, Mom. It's Tessa."
"Oh! Oh, bless your heart, Tessa Marie! You're safe! Oh, thank God!" Her mother's voice grew tight, then moved away from the phone. "She's safe! This is her on the phone!"
Tessa could hear voices in the background. "Who's with you?"
"Just some friends from Denny's come over to cheer me up. We been watchin' the news, waitin' to see if they had anything new about you. I been worried sick to death!"
"You shouldn't worry, Mom. I'm fine. I'm safe."
"Where are you? Can I come—?"
"No, you can't, and I can't leave." The words came out quickly, sounding like a rejection, even to Tessa. She tried to explain. "It's not that I don't want to see you. It's that I can't. I'm in protective custody in a police safe house. I have to stay here until this is all over. The location is secret, so I can't have visitors."
"Oh. Oh, I see." Her mother tried to hide her disappointment, but Tessa heard it anyway. Then her mother raised her voice again, speaking to her friends across the room. "They got her in protective custody—that's what they call it when they put you in a secret police safe house."
"How long have you been living in Colorado?"
Tessa's new cell phone beeped, and she saw Kara was calling. Not wanting to be rude to her mother, she let the call go to voice mail.
"About three months. I wanted to get settled before I called you, didn't want to be a burden. I'm makin' pretty good money now your grandpa ain't drinkin' it." She gave a little laugh. "I got a nice apartment here in Aurora and a good job waitin' tables."
Tessa learned her mother also had a boyfriend, that she'd given up smoking, and was taking classes to prepare for her GED.
"You been an example to me, Tessa Marie. But I don't want to waste another second talkin' about me. I want to hear about you."
Then her mother peppered her with one question after the next until Tessa began to feel claustrophobic. Had someone really fired a gun at her? Wasn't she afraid? Did she like her job? Did they pay her well? Did she have good friends? Did she like Colorado? What did she think of the mountains? Had she learned to ski?
Tessa did her best to answer, an old and unwelcome feeling of annoyance welling up inside her. She bit back cutting responses, unnecessary words that would have hurt, fighting that part of her that wanted to lash out. Her mother wasn't doing anything wrong. There was no reason for Tessa to be short-tempered with her.
At the same time, Tessa would have been a liar if she'd said there wasn't a part of her that welcomed her mother's attention, even hungered for it. The sound of her mother's voice. Her soft Texas twang. Her good-natured cheerfulness. Her unmistakable pride in Tessa's accomplishments.
The conflicting emotions left Tessa feeling itchy in her own skin.
"You're such a pretty girl, Tessa. I saw your picture on the paper's website. I can't imagine men aren't beatin' down your door. You got someone special?"
I'm in love with a man who doesn't love me.
"No," Tessa said, unwilling and unable to discuss Julian with her mother. "No one. I don't really have time for dating."
"Well, I hope you can find time. There's more to life than earnin' a paycheck."
If her mother had said this before she'd met Julian, Tessa would have said something about how careers were a much better investment of one's time than any man. But now, faced with the cold inevitability of a life without Julian, she thought she understood what her mother meant.
Julian pulled into his garage, feeling an odd mix of anticipation and irritability. He'd spent the past couple of hours shopping and thinking of ways to make Tessa pay for giving his whereabouts away to her friends—each more arousing than the next. The back of his .truck was now full of groceries and household supplies, the sort of stuff he never kept on hand, And he was randy as a goat.
It looked like he'd bought the whole grocery store. He had taken up three carts, tipping a couple of store employees to help him push them along. Chicken, salmon, shrimp, spices, cooking oil, flour, sugar, pasta, eggs, butter, fresh fruits and vegetables, canned stuff, and God knew what else. He'd gotten a few practical things from the hardware store—a lock for his office door, tools to install it. But the fact that chocolate and a plant with pink flowers on it had made into his truck only proved that he was more in need of that medical leave than he'd like to admit. One of those bullets must have lodged in his brain.
And then there was the espresso machine.
He'd stopped to get her a vanilla latte, when he'd seen it sitting on display in the coffee shop. A few inquiries and helpful suggestions from the baristas, and he'd found himself purchasing the machine, together with fresh-ground coffee and several bottles of vanilla syrup.
He wasn't playing house, he told himself. This wasn't romance. He had no interest in the concerns of home and family. He didn't want to be someone's provider. He was just trying to make her stay more comfortable. After all, she had to eat.
The kitchen table and chairs would arrive later.
Okay, so perhaps some part of him wanted to make up for having been a jerk this morning. He'd come out of the bedroom, angry with himself for having lost control of the situation, and he'd taken it out on her. He'd gotten angrier when he realized he'd made her sore, angrier still when she lied about it, and even angrier when she'd tried to hide her hurt feelings behind a smart mouth. In the end, he'd managed to wipe the happiness off her face completely—which was no doubt exactly what some part of him had been trying to do.
He p
arked, carried a couple of sacks of groceries to the door, and punched in the access code. He had expected to find Tessa waiting nervously for him, sure she'd been tipped off by her friends that she was in big trouble. Instead she was in his bedroom having what sounded like a serious conversation on her new phone.
He carried in her computer and her box of files, then the potted plant, then the espresso machine, and last the groceries, catching snatches of conversation.
"I'm glad you're settled, Mom. It sounds like you've made good friends."
Her mother?
Definitely a serious conversation.
He slipped out of his jacket, removed his harness, and set about putting the groceries away, unable to keep himself from overhearing. Or was he eavesdropping?
At one point in his life he'd have given anything to have a mother. Starved for a mother's love, he'd taken affection from any woman who would give it, picking flowers for his father's whores, defending them from his father's temper, even taking a blow or two that hadn't been intended for him. He wasn't sure when he'd realized they didn't care about him, that he was nothing more to them than the brat of the man who controlled their lives.
Was a similar scenario playing itself out here? Was that why he'd come home with flowers? Was that little boy still inside him starving for a woman's kindness?
You're a pathetic son of a bitch, Darcangelo.
"I need to go, Mom," he heard Tessa say, her words jerking him back to the moment. "I'll be in touch."
She stayed in the bedroom for a while, and he imagined she was crying. Then he heard her gasp and turned to find her staring into the kitchen, a look of amazement on her pretty face.
"Double coupons," he said, feeling at once stupid and intensely gratified.
"I was wondering what you were going to eat. That can of chicken noodle soup was mine." She smiled, then frowned. "Why are you putting the cereal with the lightbulbs?"
In short order, she'd taken over the entire procedure, emptying the bags into cupboards, explaining to him how a kitchen should be organized. He leaned against the refrigerator, crossed^ his arms over his chest, and watched as she bustled about, her delicious ass doing things for his underwear that Calvin Klein couldn't possibly have envisioned.
"I always put spices together with salt, pepper, and baking goods and keep that near the stove," she said. Then she grabbed the dish soap from where he'd stowed it next to the salad dressing. "You definitely don't want to put cleaning products with… Oh, Julian! Azaleas!"
She'd discovered the plant.
She sniffed the blossoms. "Is this for me?"
"Guns and weights make for great decorating, but I thought you might appreciate something a little more feminine."
She looked up at him through those big blue eyes. "Thank you."
She set it on the windowsill, picked at the leaves, gave it a little drink of water, the attention she lavished on it making him smile. Then, when she seemed satisfied, she went back to putting groceries away, chattering about how canned goods should go together, apparently unaware that Julian didn't give a damn about green beans right now, but was biding his time until she got to the right bag.
But she found the espresso maker first. It made her squeal and earned him a quick kiss on the lips—nice, but not enough.
"You have no idea how addicted I am to this stuff." She held a bag of freshly ground coffee beans to her nose and inhaled with a moan. "Heaven!"
His patience snapped.
He walked across the room, fished around, and handed her a grocery bag she had yet to delve into. "Let's see if you know where to put these."
She reached in and pulled out a box of condoms. And another. And another. And another. And another.
"Extra Sensitive. Warming Sensations. Twisted Pleasures. Tropical Delight. Mint Tingles." She read off the names, then looked at him with a straight face. "I'd put them in the bedroom or the bathroom."
"That's where you're wrong." He wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her against him, reaching through the opening in the front of the boxer briefs she was wearing to stroke her. "They go here."
Her head fell back, and she whimpered. "I want to, but don't think I can!"
And he remembered. She was sore,
"No problem. The solution is on the tip of my tongue."
An hour later, Tessa lay with her head on Julian's bare chest, her body still shaking from sensations that had felt almost too good to be true. He had a prehensile tongue—that was the only explanation.
"When you tell your friends about this, be sure to tell them about the swirly-sucky thing," he said, his hand stroking her hair, his voice rumbling deep in his chest. "If you're going to share details, you might as well be thorough."
"What's that supposed to mean?" She looked up at him, saw the knowing grin on his face, and knew exactly what it meant. Somehow he knew what she'd told Sophie. Heat flooded her face. "My new cell phone is bugged!"
"No. I met them all. Your friends were sitting in a little Toyota in the newspaper parking lot, watching every move I made. We had a nice little chat."
So that's why Kara had called five times.
"But how did they know where you… Oh! Oh, my God!" She remembered telling Sophie that Julian had gone to get her suitcases from the rental car. Sophie had clearly wasted no time in rounding up the others. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean—"
In a blink he had her on her back, arms pinned above her head. "Rule number six: don't tell your friends where I'm going or what I'm doing. This time it was cute. Next time it might get someone killed."
Chapter 21
"The bottom line, Ms. Novak, is that Lonnie Zoryo wasn't just a rapist and killer. He was Darcangelo's best hope for bringing down the same ruthless trafficker who got away from him three years ago, a man who hasn't got a shred of respect for women or for human life. If we'd have allowed word of Zoryo's arrest and suicide to become public, we'd have greatly reduced his value to this investigation."
Tessa listened to Chief Irving's explanation, searching for the reassuring lines of right and wrong, for the simplicity of black and white, but finding only complicated shades of gray. "The autopsy report states that the suspect had a broken nose sustained during his arrest."
"The report also states that the suspect put a loaded 9mm semiauto to Special Agent Darcangelo's head. Zoryo's lucky he wasn't shot then and there. The information is in the report and in order, Ms. Novak."
So it seemed. And yet…
"You bent the rules, sir." She came right out with it. "You took public documents out of the system and hid them away, interfering with the free flow of information."
"Let me tell you what the free flow of information would have accomplished," Chief Irving said, his temper picking up a notch. "Absolutely nothing. The man we're looking for makes the average rapist/serial killer look like a choirboy. Temporarily withholding information gave us a week to follow the leads Zoryo gave us without tipping off his boss. We're trying to save more young women from suffering Maria Ruiz's fate, Ms. Novak."
"The end doesn't justify the means. We have laws—"
"Yes, we have laws. And so far the man who kidnapped, enslaved, and murdered Maria Ruiz has evaded every goddamned one of them."
"Is this standard procedure for the DPD?"
"Of course not. I think you know that." He paused for a moment. "And now I'm going to ask you to please withdraw your request for information, at least temporarily. If you want to crucify me and Special Agent Darcangelo and the entire DPD, that's fine, but wait until we've brought this bastard down."
Torn between her professional obligations and her own feelings, Tessa didn't answer right away. Tom would expect her to tell Chief Irving to stuff it and start asking questions on the record. If she hadn't watched Maria die, if she hadn't seen the brutality of it with her own eyes, she might have done just that. After all, the police department, under pressure from a federal agent, had covered up an arrest and a jail suicide.
But it wasn't as simple as that. Not by any means.
Just as this was no ordinary investigation for Tessa, it was clear to her that this wasn't a standard murder probe for the Denver police. What would she have done in Chief Irving's place? She didn't know.
"What about the deaths of his fellow agents three years ago? You must have reviewed his files if you agreed to take Special Agent Darcangelo into your department."
She'd asked the FBI spokeswoman for the same information an hour ago and had been told to go fish. State open-records statutes didn't apply to federal agencies, they'd reminded her. She'd been invited to resubmit her request under the Freedom of Information Act, but she'd already been told to expect a year's wait for a response.
"You'd best ask Darcangelo. I don't feel authorized to speak on that subject, apart from assuring you that after reviewing those events, I felt no qualms about working with him."
She drew a deep breath, took the plunge, imagining the way Tom's face would turn purple if he knew what she was about to say. "Okay, sir, I'll formally withdraw my open-records request on the condition that you honor your agreement to inform me fully once this investigation is wrapped up."
"You got it. Cop's honor."
Tessa hung up her phone, sat back in the kitchen chair, and gave a sigh of relief. If she'd have found out Julian had conducted an illegal arrest and interrogation, if she'd have discovered that he'd brutalized his suspect, if she'd found out that he was a liar…
Thank God she hadn't! She didn't want to know that the man who'd saved her life, the man who made such incredible love to her, the man she cherished was dirty.
She sipped her homemade latte, willed herself to relax, found she couldn't.
Reading the arrest and autopsy reports for this Zoryo jerk had given her a glimpse at what Julian did for a living, and the thought of anyone holding a loaded 9mm to his head sickened her. How could anyone cope with that kind of fear and danger every day of his life?
She guessed that explained why he was never without his gun, even in the bathroom, why he never seemed to sleep deeply, why even when he smiled there were shadows in his eyes.
