The cops pushed him into the back of the squad car with a bit more force than necessary. He’d always wanted to ride in a squad car. He’d thought often of doing a ride-along, but he’d never gotten around to making the call.
He doubted he would have sat in back anyway, where there were no door handles and a plastic partition between him and the cops up front.
The radio squawked, reporting activity all over Portland. The configuration of the dash was slightly different than he had imagined it would be—and the back seat was a hell of a lot more claustrophobic.
He glanced out the window. Tasha was still talking to the Not-Creep, gesturing as she did so.
A cop. Why hadn’t she told him? Was she undercover in some way? Was that why she wasn’t in uniform?
But if she was undercover, why had she responded to a simple neighborhood argument?
He’d hated the look in her eyes when she saw him—the pure shock that soon became deep disappointment. Apparently she hadn’t expected to be arresting him on Monday morning. It was probably lucky for both of them that he had turned down her offer to see him again. This wasn’t what either of them had in mind.
He leaned his head back against the cracked leather seat. He was being arrested—arrested!—and all he could think about was the way it would change Tasha’s opinion of him. His priorities were screwed up. Not to mention the fact that this was yet another way for the Creep to mess up his life.
An arrest. What would his family think of that?
Well, Rick already knew what they would think. They wouldn’t be surprised. Although he was.
And the amount of anger he’d experienced when he was facing down the Creep—or the guy he’d thought was the Creep—worried him too.
If he hadn’t been facing the world’s wimpiest flower deliveryman, would he have pounded the guy into small pieces? Then he would have deserved this arrest. But maybe some other delivery guy would have arrived in a van—in some kind of floral uniform, even—or would at least have answered his questions.
The car moved forward and Rick closed his eyes.
He had no idea how he would get out of this one.
FIFTEEN
THE PLAN HADN’T worked quite the way Beebe had expected it to. But he wasn’t sure if it was failure or not.
He sat in his new hiding place, binoculars trained on Jessamyn’s house. The delivery had made the husband extremely angry—he had never seen a more possessive man than Chance—but at no time did he touch the security keypad.
Perhaps he had used it before opening the door. If so, there would have been no way to see it.
Beebe kept the binoculars up, watching the police talk with the deliveryman. They had taken Chance away, and soon they would go away. Maybe, if he was lucky, the deliveryman would press charges against Chance.
Then Beebe could get into the house and rescue Jessamyn from her basement prison.
She would be so happy to see him. She would be startled at first—he was prepared for that—but she would be grateful. He knew from everything she’d written that she’d be extremely grateful. Being rescued was one of her many fantasies.
Being a hero was one of his. He’d never had a chance to be a hero before. When his father had imprisoned his mother—locked her in the basement, sometimes for days—he’d been too small to help.
He’d never even been able to find the key.
This time, though, he wasn’t small. And he was smart. He knew about a lot of things. He was the only person who had figured out that Chance had imprisoned her.
Which made him the only person who could set her free.
***
Tasha stalked into the police station as far ahead of Lou as she could get. Back in Rick’s neighborhood, she’d tossed Lou the keys to the car, and stared out the window, brooding.
But Lou wouldn’t let it go. “You know that guy?”
“Not really,” she’d said.
“He used your nickname.”
“So?”
“You called him by name.”
“Give it up, Lou.”
“I’m just saying—”
“He was the uncle of the groom.”
“Jeez, how old is Brooke’s husband?”
Which led to a discussion of the wedding in all its horrors. Tasha wanted to think on the way back to the station, and instead, she was recounting the trials and tribulations of wearing a pink tent inside a BMW.
So she made Lou let her off outside the station and stalked in alone, to give herself a moment before she saw Rick again. And she was going to see Rick again. Nothing could stop that. Not rain nor sleet nor gloom of night. She was going to make that damn man explain himself if it was the last thing he ever did.
And it just might be.
“Hey, Tash!” the desk sergeant said as she passed.
“What?”
“Your guy’s in interrogation. How come you’re not letting the beat guys handle this?”
“Because I want to handle it,” she said as she passed, heading toward her messy desk. The House was pretty empty—most everyone was on a case—and she was glad for it. Still she went into the lady’s room to berate herself in private.
As she entered, she checked under the stalls for feet. Seeing none, she turned around and karate-kicked the metal trashcan behind the door. It slammed against the wall with a resounding bang, then landed on the floor with an even louder thud.
And it wasn’t as satisfying as she wanted it to be.
She leaned on one of the grimy sinks and stared into the stained mirror. She wasn’t mad at Rick—no, technically, she was mad at Rick but she was really mad at herself.
She’d been warned. Brooke warned her, her mother warned her, even Howie warned her, and she hadn’t listened. She’d considered the sources and determined they were biased. Hopelessly biased. She had figured that they all wanted her with Howie instead of the most handsome man in the room.
And Rick was handsome. He had that square jaw and those rugged features and the wonderful twinkling blue eyes—which hadn’t been twinkling at all as he dragged that pitiful delivery guy across his lawn. Then Rick’s face had been red with anger—not that she’d been paying a lot of attention to his expression. She hadn’t even realized it was Rick until she got out of the car. She was more worried about the pitiful delivery guy, afraid he was dead or beaten to a pulp or the victim of some serial killer.
Instead he’d been the victim of his own cowardice. He’d told them the story outside the house—or tried to. Whenever he spoke of Rick, his stutter got much worse. The guy—Flegal—had been terrified.
It sounded like Rick had gone crazy. One mention of this Jessamyn woman, and he’d started shouting and ranting. Since Rick was at least a foot taller than Flegal, in much better shape (gorgeous shape, if she was honest with herself), and obviously strong, the attack had brought back all of Flegal’s memories of playground beatings. His stutter had gotten worse, and he hadn’t been able to answer Rick’s questions.
Tasha still wasn’t sure what all of that meant, except that Rick was everything she’d been warned about. A handsome man who was extremely bad news. Violent, nasty, and abusive. So bad that his elderly neighbor spied on him. He’d only been in the house two months and already the old lady was afraid of him.
And Tasha had embarrassed herself by asking him out only two nights before. Fortunately he’d said no. But she’d spent all weekend brooding about it, wondering what it was about her that he hadn’t liked.
Well, maybe he’d heard that she was a cop—no, that couldn’t have been it. He’d been very surprised about it when he saw her and why was she still making excuses?
She gripped the sink even harder and would have ripped it off the wall if she thought it would make her feel better. Nothing was going to make her feel better.
Nothing except taking mighty Rick, sexy Rick, handsome, charming, gorgeous, twinkling Rick, down a few pegs.
Then maybe she’d be able to look in the mirro
r calmly. Then she might be able to forget the most galling part of the whole thing: that her family really had been right.
SIXTEEN
IF THE SQUAD car had made him feel claustrophobic, the interrogation room had made the feeling worse. Rick sat in a wooden chair, his hands still cuffed behind him. There was no window. There was a mirror which he knew hid a window. Someone could be watching him, even now.
There was a tape recorder on the table in front of him, a video camera on the wall, a table so scarred that it looked worse than the desks he’d had in school. The room had bland fluorescent lighting that made everything seem washed out. Even if the lighting hadn’t been bad, the room would have looked terrible. Once upon a time, it had been painted a metallic green that had faded to the color of rotting avocados.
The room had a smell to it too. He couldn’t tell if that smell was simply the cheap industrial cleansers that had been used or if it was a combination of ancient sweat, fear, and piss.
Come to think of it, the chair itself felt a little slimy. He scooched forward on it, then realized it was too late. If there was something on the seat—or something ancient embedded in the seat—it had already leached through his pants.
He’d been in this room hours. Or so it seemed. He suspected it had only been minutes.
The fact that they left him alone had him unnerved as well. They were giving him time to stew or to calm down. Or they thought he’d done something a lot worse than scream at a delivery guy.
And Rick wasn’t quite sure how to handle this. His attorney was in Chicago. He had a good attorney, one of the best in the state of Illinois if not the country, but an Illinois attorney didn’t know anything about Oregon law—and the last thing Rick wanted to do was to call his family to ask for help.
In their minds, this would be proof that he was exactly the man Teri had said he was all those years ago.
Teri. It was her fault he was in this position. Not this position exactly—not handcuffed in a police interrogation room—but in the position where his entire family would believe that he was a violent man unworthy of their time and help.
He glanced at the door. He wished someone would come to talk to him. He wasn’t even sure if he’d been arrested yet. If they did arrest him, he would have to get an attorney somehow—just to protect his own sense of self-worth. He’d always complained about the way people on television answered questions without an attorney present. He didn’t want to be like the characters he complained about.
Then he shook his head slightly. He had to stop thinking about characters and research and realize that this was his life, not a novel. He had to focus.
This was the first real mess he’d been in in a long time—which probably pleased the Creep to no end.
Then Rick frowned. What had the Creep been thinking of? He’d never used a delivery service before. Rick was willing to believe that the Creep would come to the door himself, but why had he sent someone else? And why roses and ferns? Why the front door in the middle of the day, when he’d known that Rick was home?
Had it been a diversion gone awry? Had there been something in those flowers? Or had he wanted to get the door open for some reason?
Rick slid back in his chair. He had to get out of here. He had to make sure the Creep hadn’t done anything to his house.
Although, at the moment, the Creep was the least of his problems. If Rick wasn’t careful, he’d be spending more than a few hours away from home.
He might be spending years.
***
Tasha emerged from the bathroom to find Lou standing near the door, leaning against the wall, arms crossed.
“I was beginning to think we’d have to send a team in after you,” he said.
“I’m all right.”
“Yeah. That’s why they tell me it sounded like World War Three in there. Who is this guy, Tash?”
“I told you. He was at the wedding.”
“And you fell for those baby blues, right? The Paul Newman eyes.”
“They’re not Paul Newman eyes,” she said.
Lou was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You want to let me handle this one, kid?”
He was trying to help her out. He was trying to take care of her. He rarely did that. She must have really looked bad.
“No,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
“Look, Tash, if there’s a conflict, then I have to handle it. You know that.”
It took a minute for her to understand what he meant. And then she blushed. And then she cursed because the blushing mechanism, restarted by the evil Rick, wasn’t shutting off.
“I didn’t sleep with him,” she hissed.
Lou held out his hands. “I didn’t say you did.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Good. So we don’t got a problem, right?”
They had a problem. She had a problem, and Lou was her partner. He deserved to know.
“I danced with him a lot, though.”
“Nothing wrong with dancing.”
Oh, there was when it was cheek to shoulder, lost in the way two bodies moved together. As if they were made for each other.
Which Rick apparently had not believed.
Which still made her sore, and shouldn’t have. Attraction was an ugly thing. She probably should let Lou handle this, but she wasn’t ready to. She wanted to make Rick squirm.
“Is there something wrong with dancing?” Lou asked. Apparently her silence had gone on too long.
Tasha sighed. “I want to talk to him alone.”
“Tash, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Good idea or not, I want to talk to him alone. Will you watch my back?”
“You want me to listen in?”
“I want you to shut off the intercom, but pretend like you’re listening and if anyone else comes up to watch the interview, I want you to get rid of them.”
“Tash, this is a simple case of assault. And the vic isn’t going to press charges. It’s a waste of time. We got the Pfeiffer case.”
“He doesn’t know that Flegal’s not pressing charges,” she said. “I want to talk to him first.”
“Why?”
“I want to find out if he’s done this before.”
“Why?” Lou sounded like a three-year-old.
“Because then I might talk Flegal into those charges after all.”
“Tash, if you got some vendetta with this guy—”
“What if he’s a nut, Lou? What if he’s a guy who’ll attack anyone who crosses him? Shouldn’t he be put away?”
“Did he strike you like a nut?”
“Not at first.”
“You’re the one with the famous instincts.”
“Maybe they’re not as good as I thought they were,” she said not meeting his gaze.
“What happened with you and this guy this weekend?”
“I told you. We danced.”
“You don’t usually get so passionate about dancing with some guy.”
“If you must know,” Tasha snapped, “Brooke told me to stay away from him.”
“So you courted the bastard all weekend.”
Tasha started. She hated being that transparent.
“And?” Lou asked.
“And what?” Tasha said.
“And what else?”
“I told you,” she said, “I didn’t sleep with him.”
“Wow,” Lou said. “Three denials. How badly did you want to sleep with him?”
Enough that it kept her awake for the past two nights thinking about him. Fantasizing about him, and then berating herself for doing so. She had a hunch she was going to berate herself even more as the week progressed.
To her surprise, Lou put a hand on her shoulder. “Tash, let it go. I’ll go in and tell him he’s free to walk and you never have to see him again.”
She shook her head. “I want to tell him that.”
“So you don’t need me to shut off the intercom.”
“I do, tho
ugh, Lou. I need to find out if he’s everything Brooke said he was.”
“That isn’t what we do,” Lou said.
She looked at him. “I can ask him a few questions, and then you can come advise him he’s free to go.”
“How about we keep this professional,” Lou said. “You ask him about the incident. I’ll listen. If he sounds bad, I’ll search for priors while you go see Flegal and talk him into pressing charges. Deal?”
Tasha felt her cheeks heat up even more.
“If you didn’t sleep with him,” Lou said, “if you didn’t even date him, then there can’t be too much embarrassing information. And even if there is, Tash, it’s me. Your partner. We’ve been together a long time. I’ve told you things I haven’t even told my wife.”
“I know,” Tasha said.
“And I knew what you meant about Brooke. Our friendship’s got to count for something.”
“It does,” Tasha said.
“I’ll swear not to share any of the private stuff with anyone. And I’ll keep any onlookers away. But that’s all I’ll do, Tash. The intercom stays on. I get to hear. Or you’re not going in there.”
She sighed. He was right. If Rick was as bad as Brooke said he was, and if Tasha found out that he had done things like this before, then she did want him off the streets. If she didn’t follow the rules, she couldn’t put him away.
“All right,” Tasha said. “You’ve got a deal.”
SEVENTEEN
TASHA STOPPED IN the narrow hallway outside the interrogation room, and peered through the one-way glass at Rick. He looked uncomfortable, sitting there with his hands cuffed behind his back, but he didn’t look frightened. Most people looked frightened when they sat in that room—even people who’d been there before.
His long dark hair brushed the edge of his collar and the position of his arms accented his broad shoulders. His tight jeans revealed the muscles in his thighs. He was as handsome and well-built as she remembered, maybe more so.
Then she shook her head slightly. She hadn’t let good looks interfere with her investigations before. Good looks hadn’t even informed her dating choices in the past. She had no idea why they were catching her now.
The Perfect Man Page 9
