Conscious of her size, Declan leaned on one side, holding the majority of his weight on his arm. With his free hand, he tugged her camisole free, then dipped his head and closed his mouth over her breast. She groaned and urgently grasped his head with both hands. He flicked the erect bud with his tongue, teasing her mercilessly. Chasyn arched against him and reached again for his boxers.
Again he stopped her, laying her hand on his shoulder as he easily slipped off her pants and thong. Declan lifted his head to take in the sight of her. She was simply perfect. Thin, but not in an anorexic way, with a tiny waist and rounded hips. Her wonderful breasts were full and pert.
His body was fully erect and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could wait. There was something about Chasyn that inspired his need for this woman. A craving he’d never known before. He placed a kiss at her throat then trailed lower, tasting her breasts, her stomach…then stopping just below her belly button. He would have ventured further, but he could feel her body tense beneath him.
Declan shed his boxers and lay back on the bed, rolling her on top of him as he did. She braced her hands on his shoulders as he held her by the hips and gently guided himself inside her wetness. He could only pray that he could last.
He reached down between them and found her sweet spot. Applying friction, he watched as her head fell back, then felt her body contract around him. That was all it took for him to reach orgasm.
Declan was slightly out of breath but Chasyn was out of bed. Rather shyly, given what they’d just done, she gathered up her clothing and did her best to cover her nakedness.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” he asked.
“Back to my room.”
“Why?”
She turned and looked at him with a blank expression he couldn’t decipher. “Having sex is one thing. Sleeping with you implies intimacy.”
“Says who?”
“Me,” she told him curtly. If she was going to accept his terms, she had to avoid intimacy and focus only on the sex. “And my opinion is the only one that counts right now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
There was a chilly awkwardness between them as Declan silently went about his morning coffee ritual. Pouting. Poor baby. Well, too damned bad. She was willing to explore a relationship with him, but she had to lay down a few conditions of her own. And for all her tossing and turning, this was the best idea that’d come to her.
“Are you going to remain mute all day?” she asked pleasantly.
He joined her at the table. His hair was still slightly damp. His jeans hugged his trim waist and massive thighs and the Carolina blue T-shirt made his incredible eyes sparkle. Expression bland, he took a sip from his mug, then said, “Last night didn’t go as I’d planned.”
“You planned last night? What were you doing, lying in wait for me to trip the alarm?”
“You know what I mean,” he practically scowled. “I didn’t mean for you to go racing from the room like we’d just done something worthy of life in prison.”
“Look,” she began as she took a sip of lukewarm orange juice. “I respect your no-strings-attached lifestyle. But if it’s going to work for me, then you have to respect my boundaries, too.”
“Which are?”
“So far I’ve only thought of one, but I’m leaving it open-ended as things progress.” She set the empty glass down. “I won’t spend the night with you in the same bed.”
“That’s a little ridiculous; I mean —”
Chasyn held up her hand. “Non-negotiable. Okay?”
“Seems silly,” Declan groused. “What if one of us is in the mood for an early bird special?” he asked with an exaggerated lift of his dark brows.
At the mere thought of it, Chasyn’s body reacted predictably. A lump of desire clogged her throat and her stomach filled with butterflies. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she answered in a high-pitched, breathy tone.
Which wasn’t lost on Dylan. He abandoned his mug and his chair and came over to her, dipping his head to place a passionate kiss on her mouth. It was over almost before it began, leaving Chasyn feeling very unsatisfied when he stepped away.
“What was that for?” she asked when she was sure her voice would no longer sound desperate.
“Spontaneity,” he answered simply.
Chasyn got her hackles up. “I was spontaneous last night.”
“I know,” he replied in a deep, sexy-as-hell tone. “When you give it a chance you’re pretty good at it.”
“Pretty good?” she challenged. “I was freaking amazing and you know it.”
“Whoa,” he said, raising his hand. “I was talking about spontaneity, not your performance. Which was, as you say, freaking amazing.”
Her ego stroked, Chasyn’s flash of temper dissipated quickly. “Before I start blushing like a fool, can we change the subject?”
“Sure.”
“I was thinking.” She ran her fingertip along the rim of her now-empty glass. “Lansing made those overpayments to his credit card account before he killed Mary. Maybe she was blackmailing him with the DVD.”
“We can check,” Declan explained. “We’ll talk to Ziggy. She can get a time and date stamp off it and Joey should be back from Tampa by now with an ID on the audio portion of the tape from Mary’s ex-husband.” He checked his watch. “You about ready to head out?”
“Just let me grab my purse,” she said.
Chasyn retrieved her purse and made a stop in the bathroom to re-check her hair and makeup. Having the annoying stitches gone was wonderfully freeing, not to mention she looked much better without bandages on her head. With her hair parted on the side, the wound on her forehead was invisible. Same with the one on the back of her head. She’d selected a pair of black jeans and paired them with a blush-colored chiffon sleeveless top with slender halter straps tied behind her neck. She’d pulled her hair into a messy top knot, accentuating her bared shoulders. After dabbing on a bit of perfume and applying some blush-colored gloss to her lips, she returned to the kitchen and reclaimed her wedge sandals from near the doorway.
“You really clean up nicely,” he said as he took a step toward her.
She countered with a half-step back. “Rule number two. Don’t start something we can’t finish.”
“I can be quick,” he reasoned. “Really quick. So quick you won’t even know it happened.”
She smiled but retained her distance. “That doesn’t sound very satisfying for me. Besides, I—we—have to focus on Lansing right now. Sex can wait.”
“Says the woman who doesn’t have the mother of all erections.”
She sighed. “Whining doesn’t become you,” she said.
“I’m not whining. I’m trying to let you know that you’re making me crazy.”
“I think a part of you was crazy long before I entered the picture.”
He frowned. “I’m hardly crazy. I have laser focus.”
“Then laser focus on something other than sex.”
“That’s a little difficult with you around.”
“Buck up, my man,” she teased. “Let’s go.”
* * *
The hangar was a flurry of activity. Everyone was there save for Tom, Sam, and Joey. Declan had Tom and Sam sitting on Dr. Lansing, while Joey was on his way back from seeing William Jolsten in Tampa.
Ziggy was nursing some sort of disgusting-looking kale smoothie. “Did you have a chance to work up those cases Chasyn printed out at her office?” he asked.
Ziggy handed him a flash drive. “Done and cross-referenced by year.”
Declan accepted the drive and asked, “Any chance you can burn an extra copy of the DVD for me?”
“Sure, no problem.”
“Can you print some stills from the video? Preferably the ones showing Lansing posing at his best?”
Ziggy snickered. “Give me about a half-hour.”
“Take your time,” he said, then turned and went to reclaim Chasyn, who was chatting eas
ily with Gavin. Declan felt a pang of something as he watched her head fall back when she laughed at something he couldn’t hear. Amusement shone in her turquoise eyes and her smile was infectious. It was also directed at his long-time friend. Hence the pang. You’re being a jealous asshole, he chided himself. He didn’t do jealous. At least he never had in the past. Chasyn Summers was throwing him off his game. A system that had worked for him since his late teens.
Pushing the annoying thoughts to the back of his brain, he led Chasyn into his office, then pulled one of the chairs behind the desk so they’d be seated side by side. Technically it wasn’t necessary. He could have just swiveled the monitor on his desk, but selfishly he wanted to be close to her. He wiggled the mouse so the machine would awaken, then inserted the flash drive into one of the USB slots.
“What is this?” she asked.
“A database Ziggy created on all of Lansing’s court appearances.”
She was quiet for a minute, then said, “Wow! She even added witness lists if there was a trial.”
“Anything jump out at you?” he asked.
“Yeah.” She pointed toward two of the entries. “These were the only cases in which he successfully testified that the defendant was insane at the time of the crime.”
“Is that unusual?”
She shook her head. “Insanity is nearly impossible to prove as an affirmative defense.”
“Why?”
Chasyn leaned closer to him as she spoke. “There’s a two-pronged system. First the defense has to prove that the person was suffering from a mental disease or defect and second—and this is much harder—they have to prove the defendant couldn’t distinguish between right and wrong and conform his or her behavior at the exact moment of the crime.”
“Now you sound like Jack.”
“I am a litigation paralegal,” she paused and her expression soured. “Or I was. They’ll probably fire me if I keep missing work.”
“You can always have a job here.”
She looked at him with suspicion in her eyes. “Is a job offer another one of your moments of spontaneity?”
“Yes and no,” he told her. “Now when I need legal consultation, I have to go to Jack. It would be nice to have someone around here who spoke legalese.” He patted her hand. “Just something for you to think about.”
“Speaking of thinking,” she began on an expel of breath. “I have to get everything moved out of my apartment and find someplace else to rent.”
“Too dangerous,” he said with determination.
Chasyn pulled her hand away. “Mr. Becker already paid Kasey’s part of the broken lease fee. If I don’t get myself out of there by Wednesday I’ll owe another month’s rent.”
“Then we’ll hire someone,” he decided. “One of those pod places. We have them pack up your stuff and store it until all of this blows over.”
“And where am I supposed to stay until then?”
“With me,” he replied with a grin he was incapable of suppressing.
“That’s very nice but I’m not going to play house with you.”
“Forget nice. I’ve got a secure property. I’m a great shot and I promised your parents I would keep you in my sights at all times.”
Leaning back, Chasyn placed her hand on her slender hip. “So this is really about your commitment to your profession?”
“Does it matter?”
Yes. It shouldn’t but it did. She didn’t want to feel like a responsibility. She wanted to feel…important.
She turned her attention back to the spreadsheet. “I remember this Miami case. It was major headline news a few years ago.”
Declan read the name. “Right. The woman who drowned her two children in the pool. Took them out, dried them off, and left them on lounge chairs when she called the cops. She heard voices, right?”
“Postpartum psychosis,” she corrected. “Dr. Lansing testified on her behalf.”
“And the other case?” he prompted.
“A woman who killed her husband after decades of abuse. Technically it was a Stand Your Ground case since they’d separated. But Lansing was able to convince the judge that even though the wife shot the husband five times in the back, the law still applied because she was suffering from severe PTSD and battered wife syndrome at the time of the killing.”
“Lansing must be a very good expert witness.”
Chasyn bobbed her head. “You have no idea. For a total bastard, you put him in front of a judge or jury and he can charm the pants off anyone, male or female.”
“Maybe he wears a good luck teddy under his suit,” Declan joked.
“Thanks,” she said with a little laugh. “Now that’s an image I will never get out of my brain. Can I check something?” She scooted closer to him so she could reach the keyboard and the mouse.
Declan tried not to notice that the swell of her breast was against his bicep. Tried and failed. Instead he just sat perfectly still and drank in the scent of her perfume and fantasized about unpinning her hair and allowing it to cascade down her bared shoulders. Then he noticed the thin strap at the nape of her neck. It was tied in a bow and all he had to do was give it one tug and her shirt would fall free. He was getting hard just imagining it.
* * *
Chasyn made five errors typing in the web address. It wasn’t that she was a lousy typist; quite the contrary. She was just distracted by the feel of Declan’s warm breath on her neck. Finally she was logged in, using her work account, to the newspaper archives. She found clippings on the website and began to scan them.
“The first case—the one with the postpartum woman—was handled by the Public Defender’s office.”
Declan asked, “Is that important?”
“The only way an indigent person can afford someone like Lansing is if he did it pro bono.”
“He didn’t impress me like a pro bono kinda guy.”
She shrugged. “He does it to keep up his reputation and for the publicity. The man has never met a reporter he didn’t like.”
“What about the other case?”
“Looks like the family paid for an attorney and Lansing’s fee. According to this article, it made the dead husband’s family furious. They thought she should rot in jail.”
“The pro bono case,” Declan began. “Who were the witnesses?”
“Her shrink. Her priest. Lansing. Her cousin. And her husband.”
“She drowned his kids and he stood by her for the trial?”
“Still does. According to a follow-up article, Mr. Martinez visits his wife twice monthly at the hospital.” She pulled up a picture of Fernando Martinez. “Hispanic. Heavyset with a ponytail,” she said as she stared at the photograph. “Could be the guy who’s been shooting at us,” she said excitedly.
“Can you check out the cousin?” Declan asked.
She went back to Ziggy’s spreadsheet. “Armando Valez. I think we just found the second half of our Tec-9 team.”
Declan brushed her hands aside and went into his database to look for a current address for Martinez. He found two possibilities from his most recent drug arrests. Jotting the addresses on a sheet of paper, he tucked it into his pants pocket just as the buzzer on his phone sounded. “Yeah?”
“I just got the DNA results,” Ziggy said.
“We’ll be right there.”
Chasyn followed Declan, nearly jogging to keep pace with him. When they reached Ziggy’s computer lair, two DNA sequencing pages were on the main screen. Even to Chasyn’s untrained eyes, there didn’t seem to be a match. “Mary wasn’t pregnant with Lansing’s baby?” she said in an incredulous whisper.
“Can’t tell,” Ziggy explained. Her fingers flew across the keyboard and a single page report popped up. “According to the lab doing the test, the sequences don’t match for a very good reason.”
“Which is?” Chasyn asked.
“The sample we submitted was from a woman.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
That cagey bastard
,” Declan muttered as he began to pace in the small confines of the area.
Chasyn, along with the others, stood quietly by as Declan finished prowling his thoughts. A woman’s DNA? That made no sense. Lansing liked to dress in women’s underwear, but that was as far as it went.
Declan opened his phone, pressed the home button, dialed, then placed it on speaker and held it out away from his chiseled face.
“Hey, boss,” she recognized Sam’s voice and slight southern accent. “Lansing is at his office, and—”
“Did either you or Joey actually see Lansing drink from the water bottle you collected?”
“Um…no, he carried it from the car and then tossed it. Why?”
Declan blew out a breath and raked his hand through his thick ebony hair. “Lansing slipped in a decoy.” He explained the results of the DNA testing. “He knows we’re watching and he’s taking countermeasures.”
“Maybe he knows we aren’t the only ones watching,” Sam said.
“The cops?” Declan asked.
“Uh-huh. A team comes and goes. They’re about as subtle as an earthquake.”
“That’s probably what spooked Lansing.”
“Well, it wasn’t us,” Sam protested. “We’re invisible.”
Declan was pensive for a moment, then said, “I think it’s time we shook Lansing’s cage.”
“What do you want me to do?” Sam asked.
“You and Joey stay on him. I want to know about the women in his life.”
After he ended the call, Chasyn asked, “What are you going to do to get Lansing’s attention?”
“Ziggy, got those stills from the DVD ready?”
She nodded. “Want me to blast them up on Facebook or something?”
“Do we have Lansing’s personal email address?”
“Of course,” Ziggy answered as though slightly affronted by the question.
Chasyn followed Declan and Ziggy back into the computer area after instructing the others to start working on Lansing’s female acquaintances along with the search for Fernando Martinez. Ziggy took her place behind the keyboard.
Trapped Page 18
