by Debra Webb
He made the next right and Jess’s interest level in the area rose despite telling herself over and over that she did not care where he lived.
The house wasn’t as massive as his parents’ home. It was one of those English Tudor styles that reeked of grandeur no matter that the house on either side of it was much larger. A cobblestone drive stretched beneath a portico that offered entrance to the side door without tackling the elements, then flowed back to a double car garage. The landscaping alone had likely taken the same size dent from his bank account as the Mercedes had.
He parked beneath the portico and hopped out as if he couldn’t wait to show the place off. There really was no need for her to go in. He could grab his change of clothes and come right back.
He opened her door. “Come on. I’ll show you around.”
She opened her mouth and he interrupted, “Don’t say fine.”
She exhaled a big, disinterested sigh. “Okay. But, for the record, we’re wasting time.”
He shook his head and headed for the side entrance. Jess shoved the car door shut and followed. By the time she reached him he had the door unlocked and the security system disarmed. “Would you like something to drink? A glass of wine? Coke?”
“No, thank you.” Wine and Burnett did not go together at any time, under any circumstances.
The side door led through a mudroom-laundry room. She shadowed him into the kitchen.
Her breath hitched before she could stop it. She’d expected nice but this was incredible. If he had picked out the surfaces, colors and textures—not to mention the amazing cabinetry—she was impressed.
“I see you have a decorator.” Maybe his ex-wife had done his decorating. Not that Jess cared. Annette could be beautiful and have an eye for decorating. As long as she wasn’t smart and nice. Jess gave herself a mental kick and retracted the cat claws.
“My mother.” He grabbed a soft drink from the enormous side-by-side fridge with its glass doors. Top of the line. More big bucks.
That the mastermind behind the gorgeous decorating was his mother was almost worse. “She did a beautiful job.” Of course she did. Spending money was a fine art to her.
“Make yourself at home.” He downed another swallow before setting the can down. “I’ll be right back.”
He removed his dress jacket as he walked away, the imagery reminding her of that time ten years ago. Only his place had been a stylish apartment downtown then. And there had been no slipping out of anything. They had practically torn each other’s clothes off.
Jess chased the memories away and wandered through the rest of the downstairs. The great room was just that. Big, comfortable furniture was artfully arranged. A massive fireplace and flat panel TV. Homey but elegant. The dining room was extremely well done. Not too formal, more an eclectic blend of lavish and simple.
The hall powder room was iron and marble and glass. Very masculine. Sexy almost.
But the coup de grace was the staircase leading to the second floor. Grand, yet the inviting textiles climbing the steps gave it a soft, welcoming appeal.
Her phone made that funny little sound that signaled she had a text. She hated text. Only Gant sent her text messages. Most of the time to relay an order without suffering any lip from her.
Jess sat down on the second step from the bottom and dug around in her bag. She needed to organize this monstrosity that housed her life. She needed to do a lot of things.
She swiped the screen, allowed the message to open fully. Private number. She frowned and reached for her glasses. With the frustrating eyewear in place she visually scrolled down the screen.
I’m celebrating. Wish you were here.
The phone slipped from her hand, bounced on the thick Persian rug gracing the sleek marble floor.
Reaching deep inside and hauling her courage back from the pit of her stomach, she considered the situation with as much objectivity as she could amass. She shouldn’t be surprised. Spears had a hard-on for her. She’d wanted so badly to get to him that she’d allowed herself to be vulnerable. She’d opened too far to entice his curiosity if not his trust.
Now he had turned his powerful obsession on her.
Wish you were here. But he was there and she was not. She refused to let him get to her with his head games.
“How about we grab some dinner before—”
She snatched up her phone and shoved it into her bag. “Fi—sounds good.” She stood, hoisted a reasonable smile into place. “Then can we drive back to the doctor’s house and just admire her neighborhood while we eat?” Her voice only cracked once. She was tired. Who wouldn’t crack a little after a day like today?
He nodded slowly. “Why not? What kind of host would I be if I didn’t show you a little of the city’s nightlife.” Suspicion hovered in his eyes. “Chinese or Mexican?”
“Chinese.” She did an about face and strolled through the house, using the same path she’d taken on her tour. If she worked hard enough, kept her cool, the whole Spears situation would fade into the background of their investigation. She did not want Burnett hovering over her.
“Harper called.”
“How many blue Fords trucks from that era are registered in the area?” That was the ticket. Play it cool. Nonchalant.
“One hundred and three.”
Jess laughed, the sound groused out of her. “Harper should have fun with that.”
“And that’s only the active ones. If he has no luck on those, he’ll have to go digging in the archives for those not currently registered.”
“I don’t even want to think how long that will take.” Jesus, couldn’t anything about this investigation be simple?
At the door Burnett stopped her, stepped outside and surveyed the area, before allowing her to cross the short distance beneath the portico to the car.
This was exactly what she did not want.
When he’d armed the security system and secured his home, he slid behind the wheel. As he backed out onto the street he braked, set those blue eyes directly on hers. “There’s nothing wrong with being afraid, Jess.”
Dear God. “I am not afraid, Daniel Burnett.” Where the hell had he gotten that idea?
“You should be.”
She laughed. He didn’t even know the half of it. “Well, Dr. Phil,” she leaned back into the lush leather seat and turned to study him, “if you give me a chance, I’ll explain why I’m not afraid.”
“By all means. I would love to hear how you came to that conclusion considering what that evil son of a bitch has done.” The fury simmering in him spilled over in his words. He really was worried.
“I built the man’s profile. I’m not his type. All his victims were brunette, tall, young.” Jess was none of the above. She was barely five-four, weighed all of a hundred pounds and she hadn’t run or really worked out in ages.
“The scumbag is just curious about me because I see him for who he is when no one else seems to. He likes to play with those he perceives as interesting. But I’m not the type who gets his motor running. I don’t evoke that level of desperation and desire in him. When he grows bored of analyzing me he’ll move on.”
Burnett didn’t need to know this but that was the part Jess actually was afraid of.
As long as the Player was entertained by her, maybe no one else would have to die.
Chapter Twelve
10:40 p.m.
Dan stuck his half empty cup of dark roast in the holder on the console. With no restroom handy, any more coffee would be a bad idea. He hadn’t pulled this kind of surveillance in years. He could easily have assigned someone else, but he wanted to do this. First, if Dr. Sullivan did have some idea where Dana Sawyer was and decided to attempt an intervention, he wanted to know immediately. Second, Jess had made a deal with him and he wanted to keep her cooperative.
He wanted to keep her close. The Player was one messed up bastard. Whether Jess took the threat seriously or not, Dan wasn’t taking any chances.
“Di
d Harper say he would have that list of Ford trucks worked by tomorrow afternoon?” Jess scooted around in her seat, trying to find a more comfortable spot.
Dan imagined that her butt was numb just like his. The thought went off on a trek of its own with him dwelling on the idea of just what a cute butt hers happened to be. Dumb, Dan. “He’ll do his best. Older models like that sometimes fall off the radar when they end up in junkyards or in some collector’s garage.”
“I can’t believe Wells and Vernon didn’t find anything else on that computer. I was hoping for more exchanges between Dana and the therapist. Or some interaction with a friend that alluded to something we could use.”
“Speaking of the therapist,” he ventured, “I don’t think she’s going anywhere tonight.” They had been parked across the street from her place for two hours.
And though Dan couldn’t say he hadn’t enjoyed becoming familiar with Jess’s unique scent and soft sighs again, it was different now. She was a married woman. Somehow that intrigued him all the more. Twenty years ago her fragrance had been wild and ferociously ambitious. Her sounds mostly of impatience. She’d tasted wild and sweet, too. Untamed and unstoppable. In the early days she’d made him feel as if anything were possible.
But reality had shattered the dream she’d inspired in him a long, long time ago. That she somehow resurrected those feelings of anticipation made him wonder if his most recent failed marriage had precipitated a mid-life crisis. There was no other reasonable explanation for how she seemed able to stir those less rational sensations. He’d denied the responses for better than twenty-four hours now.
During the last two he’d run out of excuses.
Case in point, the interior of his SUV felt considerably smaller now than it had two hours ago. The space was filled with her. The sound of her voice…the smell of her skin. All those little sighs and soft sounds she made while considering some aspect of the case.
History and experience should serve as better defenses. He and Jess were far too different, each too focused on their own goals and definitions of who they were to compromise. How had twenty years of experience and understanding of the way life works evaporated in hardly more than that same number of hours?
“I’m surprised,” Jess complained, intruding into his self-deprecation. “I’m sure Williams probably told her to stay put before he left.” She stuffed her Pepsi can in the cup holder next to his coffee. “But I had her pegged for having more moxy than that.”
Dan heaved the last of his thoughts from the forbidden to the reality of what was and shot her an are-you-serious look. Didn’t matter that she couldn’t see his skepticism had she bothered to look at him—which she did not—it made him feel better to do it.
“You haven’t even met her. How did you peg her as having moxy or not?” He wasn’t actually trying to be a smart ass. He was curious. About her…the Jess of the present.
Just another item to add to the growing number on the bulleted list of examples proving his inability to control his baser instincts where she was concerned. The same thing had happened in about five minutes ten years ago. There was a pattern here and he hadn’t figured out a way to change course before repeating it.
“I did so meet her.” Jess twisted in the seat to face him, kicked off her racy high heels and curled her legs under her. “She was in the entry behind that bull-headed attorney. I saw the look on her face.”
Her tone had taken on that pouty quality that said she was tired but right, whether he believed her or not. Just listening to her evoked images of the way she used to scowl at him when he annoyed her, lips puckered in frustration. She glowered at him that way right now. The faint light from the streetlamps and the moon prevented the full impact, but his imagination filled in the missing details. The fitted suit she wore was an earthy brown. Elegant, conservative. But whatever she wore under that jacket was lacy and sexy. The lace adorned her cleavage, allowing the tiniest peek at her lush breasts.
And she belonged to someone else.
Okay, time for a walk. “I’ll be right back.” Clearly, one date in six months was not sufficient bonding time with the opposite sex.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she argued. “You ask me a question, the least you can do is listen to my answer.”
Don’t look at her. “Fine. I’m all ears.”
“I thought you hated that word.”
“Jess, you had a point to make.”
She released a big, frustrated exhale that filled his senses with the smell of mints and chocolate M&Ms. She carried both in that huge bag of hers. “I read her professional bio. Scanned a few of her contributions to psychology journals. She’s very type A. She’s not married which tells me that a traditional relationship is too confining. Her house is ostentatious, indicating she needs to display her success for the world to see. And she doesn’t like to be wrong. Otherwise she wouldn’t have crossed the line with a patient by sending a personal plea through a social network. Moxy should be her middle name.”
If Jess had concluded all that from a little reading and a fleeting look, what did she deduce about him? “When did you have time to do all that research?”
“I didn’t.” She leaned her seat back a little further and snuggled into the leather. “Detective Wells sent the info to my email.”
“Do you walk around profiling everyone you meet or just the persons of interest in a case?” He hadn’t exactly meant to ask that. Now that he had, he wanted to hear the answer. For his own peace of mind.
“Depends.” She drained her Pepsi can.
“On what?” Tension tightened the few muscles in his body that weren’t already wound to the max.
“Whether the person is relevant to me or not.”
He shifted his attention back to the street. Oh yeah. She had analyzed him all right.
“Are you asking me if I’ve created a profile on you, just for my own amusement?”
Now she was a mind reader. “I imagine it would make for fairly dull reading.”
“To the contrary, chief. It’s rather intriguing.”
Now she was teasing him. He kept watch on the house and the street, didn’t spare her a glance.
“Based on what I know about you from your childhood and what I’ve read and learned since coming here—”
“You’ve been reading up on me, too?” He laughed. “I should’ve known.”
“Like you didn’t check up on me before calling me down here,” she challenged.
“That was different. I needed your help on a case.” Not exactly accurate but she couldn’t prove it. He’d wanted to know all he could for purely personal reasons as well. As crazy kids they had both been very competitive, even with each other.
“What did you find?” Her seat powered up to a more erect position.
“We were talking about what you found,” he reminded her.
“All right then. You’re driven, like always. You know what you want and you go after it. Those in your world believe you’re a nice guy but in reality you’re a hard-ass. You like things done. And you like them done your way. Your organization skills are topnotch.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Not too bad.
Silence thickened in the air like the humidity after a rain when the sun roared its victory, scorching everything in its path. Seconds turned to a minute and she said nothing else.
“That’s it?” He was a glutton for punishment.
“You mean besides your commitment issues?”
She hit a nerve with that one. “That was a long time ago, Jess.”
How could she still hold that against him? They were kids. Another extremely vivid memory zinged him. Nope. She was referring to ten years ago. He hadn’t called. He hadn’t had the guts. She hadn’t called either. They were even, in his opinion anyway.
With nothing more than the moonlight, he could see her face pinch into a frown. “I’m not talking about us, Burnett. I’m referring to three ex-wives. No children. Twelve-hour workdays. A
nd though your home is lovely, you’ve lived there for what? Three years?”
“Five,” he groused.
“And it looks like you moved in last week. I didn’t see a thing connected to you personally besides the framed five-by-seven your mother probably stuck on the mantel when she did the decorating.”
Damn. She was good. “I’m impressed.” As uncomfortable as hell, but impressed.
“Why did you and Annette split?”
His gaze lingered on hers in the faint light, trying to glean some motive. It wasn’t a smart move but he couldn’t resist. “I enjoyed her company. She enjoyed mine. At least for a while. Her top priority is her daughter, as it should be. Annette felt the family unit was best served intact.” The last came out chock-full of resentment. His ego had been damaged and it still stung.
“You and Andrea were close.”
“Still are.” As hard as he worked to keep that aspect of his life out of this part, it didn’t always work. He adored Andrea and the idea that she was out there somewhere hurting, maybe worse, ripped him apart inside. But he couldn’t do the job if he let that eat at him. Maybe the need for distraction was what made him so susceptible to Jess and their history.
“How would she handle this?”
“She would be strong. Careful. Smart.”
“Smart enough to properly assess her situation and make a move to escape?”
“Yes.” His voice sounded hollow. He missed that kid. A week didn’t go by without her calling, or dropping by the office if she was home from school.
“Careful enough not to take too big a risk?”
“I think so.”
“That’s good.” Jess nodded. “The others will need her.”
“The others are hardworking, high achievers, too. Reanne might not have made it through school but her employer praised her reliability and work ethic.”
“True, but the others aren’t like Andrea. There’s still a lot of little girl in the others. Their rooms. The statements made by friends and family. The way they live reveals a great deal. They haven’t made that last little emotional leap into adulthood. Andrea is far more mature. She’s a leader.”
