Secret Witness

by Jessica Andersen

  The pattern, or lack thereof, disturbed him. He felt as if they were missing something important. But what?

  “Why did you arrest Makepeace?” She was washing her hands now, still not looking at him. But that was fine with Reid, who was caught in a strange twilight between the job and the woman. He feared that if she kissed him now, or even smiled, it would be all over for him. For both of them.

  So he concentrated on the job. He knew the job. He could trust it to be there every morning when he woke up, and he could trust himself to do it justice.

  He couldn’t say the same for Stephanie. Or her daughter.

  “Makepeace,” he repeated the name to center himself and to keep from reaching for her, “is a slimy weasel who lives in the basement of the Wongs’ apartment building and has priors for indecent exposure and sexual misconduct. He had scratches on his face and no alibi.” And both Reid and Sturgeon had liked him for the rapes. Damn it.

  “There weren’t any fingernail scrapings in Mae Wong’s kit,” Steph observed as she racked and stacked the samples in the radioactive refrigerator. “So she didn’t scratch him.”

  Reid nodded. “And it wasn’t his semen. So we’re back to square one.” He nodded to the machine that was running the DNA samples, “Plus some forensic evidence. If the DNA from Mae Wong and Honey Moreplease match…”

  She finished for him, “Then we know the voice wanted me to help convict Makepeace so the real rapist would be off the hook.”

  “Yeah.” But it didn’t feel right. Reid could swear that Mae and Honey were done by two different perps. The scenes were too different. The level of violence too distinct.

  Last Warning. He thought of the pistachio words and ground his teeth. Imagined the sleeve of a white lab coat dangling from the pinkened bathtub and clenched his fists. Thought of what might have happened had Stephanie been at her desk when the mail bomb exploded and cursed out loud.

  No way. There was no way he was letting anything happen to her or to her family.

  No way in hell.

  Reid felt his temperature rise and knew he needed to burn off some steam before he exploded. He glanced over at Steph, who was logging information into the new lab notebook she’d gotten from the storeroom to replace the one that had been incinerated. “We’ve got a couple hours before that’s done, right?” he said, indicating the humming machine.

  She nodded and he felt his blood burn even hotter when she finally looked at him. He could see his own desires and confusions mirrored in her jade eyes. “Why?”

  “Let’s get out of here.” He felt the familiar weight of his shoulder holster and knew that he had a better chance of protecting her from the voice on the phone than he did of protecting her from making a huge mistake with a screwed-up cop from the Chinatown precinct. She’d been hurt by a madman who’d used her for access to the lab, and by an ex-husband who’d taken her for everything she was worth. She didn’t need another mistake like that. “I need to walk.”

  Needed to get the hell out of here before he hiked her up on the nearest lab bench and finished what they’d started earlier.

  She looked at him through protective eyewear that should have made her look ridiculous. Then she smiled and looked nothing less than beautiful. She pulled the glasses off and shook her curly red hair free. She drew her latex surgical gloves off one at a time, loosening them from the fingertips before stripping them off and tossing them aside.

  Reid’s mouth went dry when her fingers touched the lapels of her lab coat. Slid the first button free. Then the next, opening a doorway to tantalizing glimpses of the clothing beneath.

  Willpower, he told himself, and turned his back on Stephanie while she stripped out of the starched white lab coat. She was a victim. A mother. And she would never belong to him.

  He held out a hand without looking. “Let’s walk.”

  Yes, let’s walk, he thought. Before I go insane.

  IT WASN’T UNTIL they reached a seedy little neighborhood amidst a bunch of other seedy little neighborhoods that Steph realized where they’d walked to. His house. She shivered a little as he gestured her up steps that were barely lit by a cracked streetlamp.

  “Cold?” His voice came out of the darkness, low and intimate, and Steph felt a sharp tug of wanting. It had been more than three years since a man’s voice had spoken to her once the lights were out.

  Don’t go there, she told herself. He’s already turned you down once today, and besides, your taste in men is atrocious.

  Though she supposed a cop was about as far on the other end of the spectrum from her previous men as it was possible to get, even if he thought of her as nothing more than a victim.

  She shook her head, knowing he could see through the shadows. “Not really.” But she rubbed her hands across the goose bumps that shivered to attention on her bare arms, though the Chinatown night was warm and wet.

  “Let’s get you inside, then.” He reached past her to unlock the dark-brown door, and his sleeve brushed her breast, causing a thousand needle pricks of sensation to race across her chest and arrow straight to her core. She sucked in a breath and he froze, staring down at the place where they touched.

  “Reid, I—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “My fault. I’m sorry.” He glanced at her face, and Steph could see the desire banked behind ruthless cop restraint, and she heard the word echo in her head. Victim.

  If that was all he saw her as, no wonder he didn’t want to be involved. But she’d been a victim twice in her life—once with Luis and again with Roger. She’d be damned if she was going to stand for it a third time. So she straightened up and swept into his house, damning herself for the compulsion that had her memorizing every detail and filling her lungs with his scent.

  “It’s not much to look at, but it’s close to work,” he said behind her. “Not nearly as nice as Patriot, as Sturgeon often reminds me.”

  “It looks…” She stalled, trying to find something nice to say. “Convenient.”

  There weren’t any dishes in the sink, and the counters and tables were neat. He wasn’t a slob. But the whole place was brown. Drab. Neither loved nor lived in. Even the spider plant in the corner was brown, which couldn’t be a good sign as she was almost sure it was made of silk and plastic.

  “Come meet She Devil,” he invited with a wave into a back room she could only assume was the bedroom, and with a start, Steph remembered the woman he’d been heading home to the night before.

  She’d kissed him since then. Twice. And he hadn’t kissed like a man involved with another woman.

  Then again, neither had her ex-husband.

  Reid’s voice, husky and intensely sexual, drew her to the bedroom and she hovered at the doorway, feeling half-wronged and half-guilty. He was murmuring soft endearments to the other woman, and it wasn’t until she damned herself and leaned closer to catch the words that she heard the response.

  Squeaking. And a soft meow.

  She stepped the rest of the way into the room and didn’t see another woman. She saw Detective Peters’s suit jacket tossed across a bed that was neatly made with a brown spread. And she saw the detective himself, shoulder holster strapped in place, kneeling before an open drawer that held a calico cat and a pair of day-old kittens.

  He clucked and the little cat answered with a rusty meow. And Stephanie felt her heart lurch and knew she was teetering at the edge of a very steep, very dangerous cliff.

  With jagged rocks at the bottom.

  She took a physical step back, as though the chasm itself had opened up in the floor of Reid’s brown bedroom. His eyes found hers. He held out a hand. “You like cats?”

  “Who doesn’t?” But she stayed where she was and glanced at the bed.

  Warm gold gleamed and he cocked an eyebrow. Where a moment before the air had seemed to shimmer with gentleness and new life, now it pulsed with something else.

  Something elemental.

  He rose and crossed the room to stand before her. She wo
uld have backed away, but she was pulled toward him just as surely as she knew she should run. She felt the memory of his kiss on her lips and wanted another. Wanted more.

  He glanced from her to the bed and back, and the web of sudden intimacy and her own thoughts made it seem only a little surprising when he asked, “What about your ex-husband?”

  “What about him?” She leaned closer, wanting his lips on hers. Wanting his arms and his warmth. Wanting the feeling of safety in the middle of so much fear. “I don’t love him anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.” She’d loved the idea of Luis, the concept of being part of a real family with a mother and a father and a child.

  The plan had been sound, but her choice of a mate had been anything but.

  Remembering the shame and the hurt cooled her blood a degree. She leaned back and tried to regain her equilibrium. She looked up into Reid’s eyes and saw not the molten gold of returned desire, but the cool, shuttered look she associated with cop.

  He had withdrawn to that place she couldn’t enter. But why? She crossed her arms and hugged herself for warmth in the toasty little room. “It was a long time ago.”

  He touched her cheek, but the distance remained in his eyes. “I’d still like to know what happened.”

  Was he asking as a cop or a man? It was a man’s question, but a cop’s eyes.

  “I met Luis in a bar when I was a sophomore in college.” She shot Reid a glance. She’d edited this story so many times she hardly knew what was truth and what was polite fiction anymore. But if she couldn’t give Jilly a proper family, she could at least hide the fact that the little girl’s father was a criminal. If Reid cared enough to find out the rest, he would. “We dated for a few months, married and I got pregnant with Jilly.”

  Not necessarily in that order, but she’d been young and Luis had said all the right things. She shrugged as though it hadn’t mattered, though it had. “It didn’t work out and we divorced. Jilly doesn’t see him. I don’t see him. End of story.”

  “Is it?” The cop look had taken over Reid’s eyes and he took a step away. He retrieved his suit jacket and drew it over his holster, smoothing the lapels as though he needed to do something, anything with his hands. “What about the part where he took all your money and hopped a plane bound for Antigua?” The knowledge was in his eyes. Steph could practically see the word victim spelled out in his brain. He’d known all along, she realized. He knew about Luis. He knew about Roger. He knew she was a failure at the man-woman thing.

  Reid continued. “And you left out the part where he was arrested at customs on two year-old embezzlement charges and the fact that he’s in county lockup right now and you never got your money back. Did those little details just slip your mind?”

  Steph felt a blush rise, but surprisingly, anger was close behind. Her voice rose a notch and the bite of irritation felt better than the fear. “No, that information didn’t ‘slip my mind,’ Peters. I decided it wasn’t your business.”

  “Wrong!” the detective barked. And he was clearly Detective Peters now, not Reid. “If protecting you and your daughter is my responsibility then it’s absolutely my business. Your ex is in jail. Didn’t you ever stop to think that he might be involved in this?”

  “Of course I did,” Steph snapped. “And I can’t see any connection. Besides, if you’ve already investigated him enough to know he’s in jail—and have presumably cleared him in this case—then why’d you ask me about him in the first place? You already know he got me pregnant, took my inheritance and left me with a pile of bills. Why bother asking?”

  Peters scowled and jammed a few items in an overnight bag. “I wanted to see what you’d say.”

  I wanted to see if you’d lie.

  The unspoken words echoed between them like a sigh and Steph felt her shoulders slump. As she followed him out the front door into the humid funk of Chinatown, she muttered, “These things that you call lies, Detective, I call protecting my daughter.”

  Only a slight stiffening of the broad shoulders in front of her acknowledged a direct hit.

  SHE HAD LIED to him. Again. That it had been a sin of omission didn’t make it any better in Reid’s mind. She still didn’t trust him. And he still wanted her.

  Reid scowled as he watched her remove a film cassette from the lab freezer and wished it could be different. Wished they could have dated casually the year before and that they’d grown tired of each other. It would be easier to remember her fondly than to exist in this perpetually half-aroused state of alternating between wanting to strangle her and wanting to strip her bare beneath the starchy lab coat and pin her to the nearest desk.

  Madness.

  Then his phone rang and images of naked redheads gave way to images of death and dismemberment. Tears and trials. His job. His life.

  A life with no place for a woman. He sighed and answered, “Peters.”

  Sturgeon wasted no time. “They popped Makepeace loose an hour ago. No reason to hold the slimy little weasel if the DNA didn’t match, and I couldn’t stall the paperwork any longer. Sorry.”

  Reid muttered a curse. That meant whoever had threatened Stephanie would know they were once again looking for Mae Wong’s rapist. He swore again, and saw her eyes go round. He shook his head and mouthed everything’s fine, but he could see she didn’t believe it.

  And really, why should she? It was a lie.

  “Anything else on your end?” he asked Sturgeon, and got a grunt in reply.

  “Nope. I’m backtracking over all the stuff we did to come up with Makepeace as a suspect in Mae Wong’s rape, but it’s pretty cold. That was almost six months ago now. I pulled Dodd and Chang in on the Moreplease case…” Sturgeon’s voice barely quivered over the ridiculous name, but Reid imagined it had caused a stir back at Chinatown station. “But it’s up to forensics now. We could use a few good fibers or a shoeprint on this one if your Miss Alberts can’t do anything with the DNA.”

  “We’ll see about that in a few minutes,” Reid glanced at “his” Miss Alberts and felt a wistful tug. “I’ll call you when I have something.”

  IT WAS CLOSE to midnight when the film was ready for processing, but Stephanie wasn’t tired. She was wired and edgy as she avoided looking toward Genie’s side of the thirteenth floor. She couldn’t think of that now. Wouldn’t.

  Jilly and Maureen were safe—she’d called several times to be sure of it—and it was time to develop the film that would tell them once and for all whether the voice on the phone had wanted to convict Makepeace because he’d done the crime himself. Then, once they were sure they had the proper DNA, they would be able to scan it into the federal and local databases and see what happened.

  Maybe they’d get lucky and a name would pop up and it would all be over.

  Stephanie darted a glance at Reid, thinking that once it was over she’d go back to imagined sightings of him across Kneeland Street. The idea made her sadder than it should have, but ever since that moment earlier when she would have given him everything and asked for nothing in return, she had rebuilt most of her defenses. He’d been right to pull away from her. She might not be a victim in her own mind, but she was a mother, and he’d made it plain he wasn’t the family type.

  She thought wistfully of the look on his face as he knelt beside the kittens, then mentally kicked herself. He’d made no bones about it. He didn’t want to be involved with her. So she’d depend on him to keep her safe for now and ask nothing more from him.

  She wouldn’t ask for something he couldn’t give.

  “All set to develop the film?” He must have dozed for a moment, because his voice was husky with sleep and his hair was slightly mussed. Steph had to stop herself from smoothing it down. Instead she mustered a nod. “All set. I’m going to take it to the developer room now.”

  He straightened with a wince and she wondered if he’d been hit by something during the explosion. He hadn’t said anything, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hurting. But he forestalled her question by
announcing, “I’ll go in with you. I want to see it the moment it’s done.”

  He wanted to go into the darkroom. With her. The thought brought a shiver, not of fear, but of excitement. Once, Steph had asked Genie whether she was afraid of the little room, and had been treated to a sly-eyed wink. Since then, she’d noticed the newlywed lab leaders sneak into the darkroom together on more than one occasion and emerge looking decidedly satisfied.

  Now, Steph imagined Reid and her in the room together, surrounded by warm darkness and waist-high counters. A red flush climbed her cheeks. “You can’t come into the developer room with me.”

  “Why not? You aren’t going to switch the results on me, are you?” He was only half-kidding.

  She shook her head. “Absolutely not. It’s just… Too small.” Too full of possibilities.

  Those golden eyes saw too much. He turned away. “Never mind. I’ll wait in the hall. Ready?”

  Ready or not, she slid through the revolving doors and fed the cool film into the X-ray developer. Moments later, she was back outside in the white, safe hallway that didn’t have a single sexy-looking counter in it.

  But it did have a sexy-looking detective in it, frowning as he held up the developed gel. “Does this say what I think it says?”

  She glanced at the patterns and nodded. “I’ll have to run it through the scanner to be a hundred-percent sure, but it looks like a match to me.”

  They stood shoulder to shoulder and looked at the black bars that shadowed the silver-gray film. Reid swore quietly, before handing the data to her and rubbing his hands on his thighs to wipe away the last of the emulsion.

  “It’s him,” she said unnecessarily.

  He nodded. “Yeah. It’s him. Now we just have to figure out who the hell he is.”

  Chapter Eight

  It was silly for her to feel let down by the results, Steph thought a few minutes later as she moved through the floor, shutting the equipment down for the night. She’d been in science long enough to know that most experiments raised more questions than they answered. But still, some small part of her had hoped the black bars on the X-ray film would spell out “Joe Schmo Is Guilty!” or some such nonsense.