Secret Witness

by Jessica Andersen

  He smelled her on the stuffy night air and realized he was standing in the doorway to her room. She was lying sprawled across the covers, and he could see in the splashing moonlight that her forehead was wrinkled. She was frowning in her sleep. He couldn’t blame her. She was sending her aunt and daughter away the next day, and entrusting her own safety to a man who was ruled as much by anger as by justice.

  He felt his own frown and ordered his face to ease. He should crunch himself up on the kid’s bed and try to get a few hours of sleep. Morning would come soon enough. The job would intrude soon enough, reminding him that she was the victim and he stood between her and a voice on the phone that promised dire retribution. Reminded him that he couldn’t be distracted when her life was in danger.

  But he was unable to turn away from the sight of the little child’s hand clutched possessively around the strap of Stephanie’s nightgown. After a moment, a burble of sound alerted him that the kid was close to awake. He stepped farther into the room and held a finger to his lips when she looked up at him.

  “Shh. Mommy needs her sleep,” he whispered, and the child nodded solemnly with those wise old eyes that had already seen too much. She smiled. He backed away. “No way. Last night was a fluke, kid. I’m going back to my room.”

  She whistled a couple of notes, from that same damn melody she’d been repeating over and over, and stretched her arms toward him. He thought her little lips mouthed a word.

  “Aw, heck.” He crossed the room in two strides, sat in the protesting rocking chair, and gathered her onto his lap. She was going away the next day. He wouldn’t have to see her again, right? And nobody had to know about this. Nobody.

  But as her head sagged against his chest and his own eyelids lowered, he thought he saw her lips move again. Thought he heard a whispered word.

  “’Tek-tif.”

  Because he knew nobody was looking, he touched his lips to her hair. “Yeah Jilly. I’m the detective. I’m going to keep you and your mommy and Auntie Maureen safe. I promise.”

  But as he slid toward sleep, Reid feared it was his turn to be the liar.

  SHE SHOULD BE a better person, Stephanie thought the next morning, than to be jealous of her own daughter. But as she waved Mortimer’s car off and suppressed a pang at the sight of Jilly’s little fingers pressed against the window in farewell, she couldn’t help thinking that she wouldn’t mind spending the night draped across Detective Peters’s chest like her daughter had. Twice.

  Stop it, she told herself sternly. Don’t go there. Just because he didn’t act like the child-hater he claimed to be didn’t mean he was any less of a bad choice for a relationship. He worked too hard, slept too little, left the toilet seat up in a house full of women, and he kept such tight control on his temper, she had to wonder what it was like when he lost it.

  No, Reid Peters wasn’t exactly the man of her dreams.

  But then again, Luis had certainly acted dreamy…until the day he’d emptied their joint bank account, the college fund she’d started for their eight-month-old daughter and the cookie jar full of ‘fun money’ and had taken off for Mexico with the feds on his tail.

  That alone had almost been enough to bar her from being cleared to use the national DNA database, but Genie’s husband, Nick Wellington, had leaned on a few of his senator father’s friends and the way had been cleared. He’d joked it was the biggest use he’d had for his father in years. Steph thought that was too bad. She still missed her dad some days, even though both her parents had been gone a good twenty years, leaving Maureen to raise her alone.

  Now it was up to Maureen to protect the grandchild they would never meet. And it was up to Steph to solve the mystery and bring Jilly and Maureen back safely.

  She sighed, realizing she’d been staring down an empty cobbled street for several minutes. She turned to Reid. “Sorry. Woolgathering. You ready to go to work?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go get the bastard.”

  But it wasn’t quite that easy, as they learned as soon as they’d translated the DNA results into marker sizes and inputted them to the federal convicted offenders database.

  No match.

  “What does that mean?”

  Steph bared her teeth. “What does it look like? There’s no DNA match in the convicted offenders database. He’s not in there. Damn it!” She slapped the desk in frustration as all the hopes she’d pinned on this one experiment shattered into a million pieces.

  She glared at the computer. He wasn’t in there. Then she glanced at the window, where Chinatown bustled with life thirteen stories down.

  He was out there. And he was going to hurt her.

  Damn it! She’d been so sure this was the answer.

  Reid touched her shoulder and she flinched away. She couldn’t stand for him to be nice to her now. She felt as though she was close to falling apart, and that when she did, nothing would put her back together again.

  She smiled grimly. Just call her Humpty Dumpty.

  Reid withdrew his hand. “Is that the only index you can query?”

  “No. There are others. That was just the one that works the best. There are state and local indexes, as well as forensics uploads and missing persons, but they don’t come with names and addresses, only the knowledge that the voice matches another unsolved case or a missing person.”

  Reid sighed. “Okay, you try those databases. I’m going to call Sturgeon and see if we have a plan B.” He strode from the computer room and Steph followed him with her eyes, wondering whether she would ever grow tired of watching him. Wondering whether she would ever see him again once this was over.

  Wondering whether this would ever be over and if her family would survive it.

  On a bitter sigh, she turned back to the computer and got to work.

  Reid found her an hour later, still scowling at the screen. It was blinking No match. No match. No match. No match.

  “I swear to God,” Steph muttered, “the next time I see those words on this screen, I’m going to scream bloody murder.” The word murder bounced around the empty computer room and they both cringed. “Ready for a break?” he asked, noticing the circles beneath her eyes and the defeated slump of her shoulders. He would have touched her then, but she’d shied away from him earlier and he couldn’t blame her. If he and Sturgeon had been smarter and luckier, they might have already caught the guy, and Steph could have gone back to her normal life.

  But the police, like the lab computer, had come up with nothing. No match.

  “Break?” She pushed away from the computer and spun her chair irritably. “Yeah, I guess. I’m not getting anywhere here, which makes no sense. Why was he worried about DNA evidence if he’s not in the database?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t understand enough genetics to know you need something to compare it to,” Reid suggested.

  “Maybe,” she agreed, but she didn’t sound like she believed it. “But I’ve got this feeling…”

  “Yeah, I know all about those. Come on, let’s get some lunch. This will all be here when you get back.” Unless another mail bomb was delivered to the computer room, Reid thought without humor. But it was Saturday so the lab floor was deserted, and they’d given strict instructions to the lobby guard that all packages had to be cleared through Sturgeon or himself.

  They were as safe as he could make them for the moment, he thought as they walked shoulder to shoulder into Chinatown and left the hospital behind.

  “Did Detective Sturgeon have a plan B?”

  Reid shook his head as he eyed the thronging pedestrians at the crosswalk. The perp could walk right by them and he’d be none the wiser. Until they had a name or a witness or some new evidence, they had nothing. No match. “He’s working the Moreplease case as fast as he can, and going back over Wong at the same time. We were really hoping the DNA evidence would point us in the right direction.”

  “Yeah.” She tucked her chin into the collar of her shirt. “Me, too. I just can’t get past the fe
eling that he’s in there somewhere, you know?”

  “I know. How would he know to worry about the DNA evidence unless he’s already been exposed to the concept?” As they passed a doorway that advertised Live Nude Girls! Reid scowled at a low-level dealer and sometime informant who obediently melted back into the shadows. He wasn’t in the mood for punks today. The anger was there, churning sluggishly and waiting for him to let his control slip. Or maybe it was the sexual energy he felt whenever Stephanie was nearby. He wasn’t sure he could tell the difference between the two any more. Both were hot. Both threatened to escape his control.

  And both overwhelmed him.

  “Maybe his lawyer explained it to him the last time he went through the system.” Stephanie paused outside the restaurant she’d chosen. “But if that’s the case, how come he’s not popping up on any of the searches?”

  Reid shrugged and scanned the eddying crowd again. His back itched, damn it. The perp was out there. Somewhere. “I don’t know.” He held the door open and practically shoved her through, cursing the hot wave that raced up his arm at the contact. He had it bad. But knowing it and doing something about it were two different things. He merely growled, “Let’s eat.”

  There was a long wait, so they grabbed takeout instead and wrangled over the choices like a couple who had nothing better to do than debate crab Rangoons versus spring rolls. But through it all there were two layers of tension—the danger and the desire.

  Reid was doing his best to deal with the one and didn’t have a clue how to stamp out the other.

  When they hit the street again, greasy brown bags in hand, he took Steph’s arm to hurry her down a narrow alley to the next cross street.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Everything.” The heat sang up his arm while the spot on his back burned. “I have a—”

  Feeling, he’d meant to say. But the deafening rat-tat-tat of automatic gunfire drowned him out and the itchy spot between his shoulder blades sang like a wound. This was it. The perp had come for her, and to hell with anyone else who got in the way.

  Stephanie screamed and covered her ears. Reid yelled, “No!” and felt the anger blaze high. He pushed her into a shallow doorway off the alley and yanked his weapon clear. Wanting, needing to see the man who had done all this.

  Wanting to kill him.

  The hail of noise intensified and Reid heard screaming out in the cross street beyond. He tensed, wanting to go help but needing to stay with Stephanie. To protect her.

  The voice on the phone was coming for her.

  Then the gunfire slackened and Reid realized it sounded wrong somehow. Like a soundtrack rather the real thing. The noise halted. The screams went on.

  Then they were joined by the sound of clapping and hooting.

  Cheers. Whistles.

  And a last few sharp bangs.

  “Reid?” He felt her hand on his shoulder and the warmth of her body against his back. “It’s okay. It’s just firecrackers. Chinese firecrackers.” Her breath feathered against the short hairs at his neck and the lust roared up to meet the anger that spiked at the knowledge that he’d overreacted. Badly.

  In the heat of the moment, he had pushed her up against a door and pressed against her so his body would act as a shield. Now, he could feel the press of her breasts against his back and the curve of her groin against his rear. Standing on the single shallow step, she was perfectly aligned with his body.

  The pressure excited him.

  It undid him.

  “Reid?”

  He spun and pressed against her, trapping her against the door and leaving her powerless but not caring a bit. He saw the surprise in her blue-green eyes, and the quick flare of temper that matched his own.

  He didn’t give her a chance to give. He took.

  His lips crushed down on hers as their lunch fell to the ground and the anger rose high. Anger at the man who wanted to hurt her. Anger at the situation that made her part of his job and threatened her life. Anger at himself for not being able to stay away. Anger at her for making him feel things he didn’t want to feel.

  And over it all, the tangling, taunting heat that he called lust because he didn’t know a better word.

  The flames soared higher, and he realized that far from plundering, he was being met heat for heat, and that her quick, clever hands had worked their way inside his shirt where they teased and took without mercy.

  He fastened his mouth on her throat and her head tipped back. She moaned when he took possession of her breast and he felt the beast within him roar with a primitive, undeniable hunger. He was hard and aching where he pressed against her, frustrated and excited at the same time by the layers of cloth that separated them.

  He kissed her mouth again, almost dying from the feel of it when she sucked his tongue deep and hooked one leg high around his waist so he could press home more fully. He caught her thigh and felt the heat through her thin linen slacks. Felt her shiver when he scraped his fingernails along the inner seam and thought he might howl with the power and the want of it all.

  Catching her other leg, he boosted her up so he was pressing her fully against the filthy alley doorway, thrusting into her with his tongue and his throbbing, confined length until they were both panting into each other’s mouths and there was no sight, no sound. Only feeling.

  The feeling of the woman against him. His woman.

  And the knowledge, like the firecrackers that rattled again in the street beyond like gunfire, yanked him back to the reality of who she was. Who he was. Where they were.

  Reid froze.

  He was dry-humping his protectee in a Chinatown alley.

  Oh, hell.

  This was about as unprofessional as it got. And stupid. He glanced around the alley. And dangerous. Six big guys could have come up behind him and he wouldn’t have known.

  Wouldn’t have cared.

  He unwrapped her legs from his waist and stepped away, shoved his hands in his pockets so she wouldn’t see how badly they shook, and took a breath.

  “Don’t you dare,” she hissed. Her jade eyes snapped with temper and her fine-boned hands were clenched at her sides.

  Reid wondered whether Botticelli had ever painted Venus on a Rampage. “I—”

  “No!” she cut him off again. “You don’t get to walk this time, Peters. You don’t just get to kiss me when you feel like it and turn away when it gets messy.” She took a step toward him, and damned if he didn’t find himself backing away.

  She poked a finger in his chest and he noticed his shirt was undone except where the shoulder holster had cinched it shut. He felt the scrape of her nail across his skin and fought not to shudder. Fought not to reach for her.

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Not this time, buster.” Oddly, her temper soothed his own, and he fought an urge to grin when she poked him in the chest again. “You don’t get to walk away this time. It’s my turn.” She brushed past him and called over her shoulder, “Don’t kiss me again until you mean it, Peters. And I’ll thank you to remember that I’m nobody’s victim.”

  This time, when she walked toward the roaring noise of leftover firecrackers from the Chinese New Year, Reid didn’t try to stop her. He followed, thinking to himself that he’d make damned sure she was nobody’s victim.

  But he feared he would become hers.

  Chapter Nine

  Steph marched back to the lab and left Reid to follow with the crumpled bags of Chinese food that had more or less survived her brush with danger and stupidity in the alley. Danger from what had turned out to be firecrackers. Stupidity for letting him kiss her again. For kissing him back.

  They didn’t speak until they were alone in the elevator, riding back up to thirteen.

  “I don’t think you’re a victim.” He stared at the blinking floor lights as he said it. “I never have.”

  “Then why say it?” It had hurt more than it probably should have, because part of Steph saw herself that way
. As Luis’s victim. Roger’s. Well, no more. She refused to cry and hide. She was going to fight if it kill…well, she was going to fight.

  “I was reminding myself that you’re off limits. You’re under my protection as an officer. That makes you my job.” They reached thirteen and he waited in the lobby while she keyed in the code to unlock the security door.

  She stomped past him, still churned up by his kisses, still ticked off by how easy he found it to turn her away. “You’ve got a strange way of keeping me off limits, Peters. Do me a favor and don’t touch me again, okay? I’m not looking for a quickie in a Chinatown alley.” Though she would have settled for it fifteen minutes ago and the future be damned. “And I’m not making another mistake with the wrong guy. It’ll be Jilly and me for a while. If I let a guy into that, he has to be there for the long haul and he has to want to be a father to Jilly.”

  They entered the computer room and she felt the edgy tension rise in him as he brushed past her to stand before the computer she’d been working on. Without looking at her, he said, “I’m not that guy, Steph.”

  Though it had been obvious all along, it still hurt to hear. She nodded and he glanced over. Their eyes locked and held.

  “No match?” he asked quietly.

  She nodded again. “No match.” She sighed and sat down at the computer, acutely aware of his nearness as she logged back on. She could taste him in her mouth and feel the lingering dampness between her legs where she’d been ready for him to take her there, standing up in a filthy alley in the back of beyond.

  It would have been wonderful, she knew. And it would have been terrible, because after that there would be no going back. No pretending they weren’t barreling down the path to self-destruction and heartache.

  She sighed again as No match flashed on the screen once again. It was time to get back to work. She cracked her knuckles and poised her fingers above the keyboard. Then she began to run searches as she thought out loud.