The Baby Mission

by Marie Ferrarella

  Warrick sent a less-than-subtle grin toward C.J. before scrolling through the list.

  Unwilling to be ignored, Nina sighed loudly. “This is too much, just too much.” She rang her hands, careful not to ruin the polish on her long, bloodred nails. “I can’t handle any more. First my son, now this.”

  “Your son?” C.J. echoed.

  Warrick raised his eyes from the client list. Every one of the murdered women had come here, at least once, if not repeatedly. They had their connection. Now what did they do with it?

  “What about your son?” C.J. had asked the question, but Nina gave her answer to Warrick. “I just finished paying off the lawyer’s fees. Stupid lawyer couldn’t even get him free.”

  Warrick exchanged glances with C.J. “What was he charged with?”

  “Some crazy, trumped-up deal. The police claimed he stole a car. My son’s not a thief, he’s a dear, sweet boy.” She fluttered her lashes. C.J. struggled to keep from laughing. “A little slow, maybe, but that doesn’t mean someone gets the right to just throw him in jail like that. He used to work here for me, did the shampooing. Sometimes helped with the manicures. The clients all liked him.”

  Warrick exchanged looks with C.J. “What’s your son’s name?”

  Suspicion suddenly entered the carefully made-up eyes. Slim brows gathered over the bridge of her nose. Suddenly she transformed into the protective lioness, fighting for her cub. “Why, so you can do something to the records and throw him back in? I know how this system works, honey. Always against the little man—”

  Exasperated, C.J. looked at the hairstylist closest to her. The woman made no attempt to look as if she wasn’t listening to every word of the conversation in the back room. “You know her son’s name?”

  “Henry, Herbie, Harry, something like that,” the woman replied.

  C.J.’s eyes darted to the name on the business license. The woman’s full name was Nina Maxwell Claymore. Maxwell. Bingo. Tapping Warrick, C.J. pointed to the framed sign.

  “We’d like a copy of your client list to take with us, please,” C.J. told the woman.

  “And then we’ll be out of your hair,” Warrick added for good measure.

  The woman looked uncertainly at them, then with a huff hit the print button. In the recesses of the back room, a dot matrix printer wheezed to life.

  “Still circumstantial, you know,” Warrick pointed out as they left the beauty salon.

  C.J. finished folding the list and stuck it into her purse. “If you keep tripping over arrows pointing in the same direction, eventually you have to think that maybe that’s the direction you should be taking.” Opening the door on the passenger side, she got in.

  Warrick slid in behind the steering wheel. “You want to try to sell that to a D.A.?”

  This was a lot more than they had yesterday. Impatience mingled with a sense of urgency. “So what, we wait until he kills another girl?”

  “No,” starting the car, he backed out of the small parking lot that Nina’s shared with a fortune teller called Madam Alexis, “we catch him in the act and stop him. You have to admit if we get him with a dime-store choker and a rose in his possession, that’ll make a stronger case for arresting him.”

  She crossed her arms before her as he picked up speed. “Don’t you ever get tired of being right?”

  Warrick grinned. “Hasn’t happened yet.”

  She wished he wouldn’t grin like that. It went straight to her gut. The last thing she wanted. C.J. looked out the window. “So what do you want our next move to be? Questioning Harry again? He might break.”

  “And he might surprise us and not be the guy after all.” He turned right at the corner, heading toward the southbound 405 Freeway. “Don’t forget, we didn’t think it was him after we talked to him.”

  “You didn’t think it was him,” C.J. emphasized. “I had my doubts.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  She didn’t particularly care for his smirk. “I did the whole Ted Bundy analogy, remember?”

  “Right.” It was easier to agree than to argue with her. “Let’s see if we can get some surveillance time authorized.”

  Surveillance, he reflected. That meant the two of them together in cramped quarters for hours at a time. The thought was at once exciting and unsettling. He was just asking for trouble, he realized.

  “By the way—” he deliberately tried to keep his tone light “—if Alberdeen authorizes the time, you can’t wear your perfume.”

  “My perfume?” She looked at him in confusion. “Why? What’s wrong with my perfume?”

  Hands on the wheel, Warrick looked straight ahead. “It’s sexy.”

  “You think it’s sexy?”

  He could hear the smile in her voice. That probably made her think it gave her some kind of power over him. He shouldn’t have said anything.

  Too late now.

  “Just don’t wear it, okay?” he said shortly, switching lanes and speeding up as he made his way onto the freeway.

  Chapter 13

  Warrick shifted restlessly. His legs were beginning to feel cramped. After three days of fruitless surveillance, all of him was beginning to feel cramped.

  C.J. was sitting less than six inches away from him, looking at a bank of monitors. He scowled in her direction. You’d think she’d have a little consideration.

  “I thought I specifically asked you not to wear your perfume.”

  They’d been sitting inside the U-Haul truck parked across the street from Maxwell’s apartment building for the past six hours, and the air felt as if it was getting rather scarce. Yesterday it had been a cable truck, the day before, to avoid any undue attention, the truck had borne the insignia of the local electric company.

  Maybe it was his imagination, but her perfume seemed to be filling up every available space. It was certainly doing a number on his nervous system.

  C.J. didn’t bother turning around. “I know.”

  Maybe this surveillance thing wasn’t such a good idea. “Then why did you?”

  This time she did turn her stool to face him. What the hell was he talking about? “For your information, I’m not wearing any perfume.”

  Yeah, right. Did she think he’d lost his sense of smell? “Then what’s that scent hovering all through the truck?”

  To underscore his point, Warrick leaned over and sniffed her hair. Wildflowers came instantly to mind. A field of wildflowers. With C.J. lying in them, nude, her arms raised toward him.

  He backed off, shaking his head. Hopefully shaking out the thought.

  C.J. paused, thinking. “That’s my shampoo. Or maybe my soap, I don’t know.” She looked at him. He’d been getting progressively antsier with each hour that went by. “What’s the matter with you?”

  He looked at her pointedly. Lately, he felt as if his grasp on things was slipping. “I’m not sure.”

  C.J. put her hand on his forehead, checking for a fever. “Are you coming down with something?”

  “I think I’m already down with it.” Warrick jerked back his head. It was best if they kept contact down to a minimum. “You don’t have to mother me.”

  “Sorry. Once I’m in the mode, it’s hard to stop.” Because of the erratic hours she was keeping, the baby was at her mother’s. C.J. anticipated coming into an empty house and missed her daughter already. “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

  He shrugged off her words, turning away from her. He found himself facing a wall of control panels. “A doctor can’t help with this.”

  There was no place to move.

  It felt as if the very sides of the truck were closing in, pushing him closer to her. Ever since that night, she’d been on his mind more and more. Like a drug addict who couldn’t think of anything else but the source of his addiction and getting just one more hit, he couldn’t move his mind far from thoughts of her.

  Especially when she was only a reach away.

  Warrick moved closer to her almost against his will. Certainly against
his common sense. “C.J.?”

  There was something in his voice that had her looking away from the monitor that was trained on the building’s front entrance.

  “What?” The word caught in her throat.

  His mind took a coffee break. There was no other way to explain it. Warrick brushed the back of his hand along her cheek, watched as her eyes grew larger. His desire mushroomed.

  He lowered his mouth to hers.

  The knock on the truck’s side panel had them both springing back, startled, two tightly wound coils being released.

  C.J. looked at the monitor trained at the rear of the truck and let out a relieved breath. They hadn’t been made. She nodded at the sliding door. “It’s the B team.”

  Warrick pulled open the door. Rodriguez and Culpepper climbed in.

  “We prefer thinking of ourselves as the A team,” Rodriguez informed them. Any available space was all but eaten up. There wasn’t enough room left over for a complicated idea.

  C.J. looked at the two men who had come to relieve them and deadpanned, “So which one’s Mr. T.?”

  “Very funny,” Culpepper grumbled. He changed places with C.J. and took the stool in front of the monitors. “It’s bad enough I’ve got to trade a warm bed for this.” The world outside the van looked fairly dead. “Anything?”

  She shook her head. She and Warrick had taken over from yet another team. The two men in the Mustang had followed Maxwell to and from his job as a busboy at a nearby family-style restaurant. “He hasn’t left the apartment all night.”

  “Three days and nothing. I’m beginning to think we’re barking up the wrong tree,” Rodriguez complained.

  He moved past Warrick as best he could, taking his place. Other than a small table, littered with chips, sandwich wrappers and empty containers of mediocre coffee, the inside was dominated by the bank of four monitors, focused on different parts of the building.

  There’d been one instance where they thought they’d gotten lucky. Maxwell had left his apartment the first night of the surveillance and driven to Mason Park, the place where the last victim had been found. Unable to follow him without attracting his attention, Warrick had alerted an alternate unit to drive by the area. But when Maxwell got out of his car, his hands were in his pockets, not around a body he was looking to dispose of.

  Sneaking past the guard rail, he had made his way to the lake. He walked along its perimeter for almost an hour before returning to his car and driving home again. It appeared that he’d been seeking solitude, just as he’d told them in his statement.

  “Give it time.” Getting out, Warrick waited for C.J. to join him. “He just satisfied his blood lust. He needs time to work it up again.”

  “Now there’s a comforting thought.” With a dramatic sigh, Culpepper closed the van door on them.

  The cool air failed to have any effect on him. He still felt warm. Warrick shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling at loose ends. He glanced at C.J. as they headed to the Bureau’s car. “You want to go somewhere for a drink or a cup of nonstale coffee?”

  She was tempted, but she shook her head. “It’s nearly midnight, Warrick. I’d better not.”

  Both hands on the wheel, he pulled away from the curb. “Right.”

  Don’t say it, don’t say it. She might as well have been talking Greek to herself. “But you’re welcome to come over if you want a good cup of coffee.”

  Warrick looked at her, struggling with nobler instincts, instincts that told him this wasn’t going to go anywhere so he shouldn’t pursue it. He thought of his parents, of his all-but-stillborn marriage. He felt he was a man who didn’t know how to love, not by example, not by experience. The best thing he could do for himself, and for C.J., was to call it a night and go home.

  He turned the car in the direction of her house. Away from the field office. “Okay.”

  They both knew it wasn’t about coffee.

  The house was still when she opened the front door. Just as she’d expected it to be. But the all-pervading loneliness didn’t come.

  Except for the lamp on in the living room, there was no illumination. Warrick closed the door behind them. “Where’s your mother?”

  “Home. Her home,” she clarified. “With the baby.” She tossed her purse on the sofa and led the way to the kitchen. “I thought it would be easier on everyone like that.” She smiled ruefully. “Except on me.” Reaching in the overhead cabinet for the coffee filters, she laughed softly at herself. “I’m still grappling with separation anxiety, I guess.” She flipped open the top and took out a single filter. “I hate being away from her.”

  He leaned against the counter, watching her. Wanting her. “Then why don’t you quit?”

  She moved past him, to the refrigerator. The coffee can was on a shelf mounted on the door. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly independently wealthy. There’re bills to pay.”

  “You’ve got a law degree,” he reminded her. “Your father would be happy to take you into the firm.” The man had told him so more than once.

  Moving Warrick aside, she opened the drawer he’d been blocking and took out a tablespoon.

  “My father would be overjoyed to take me into the firm.” She measured out two cups worth of crystals. “It’s what he’s wanted all along.”

  He watched her eyes as she spoke. He knew how much her family meant to her. But so did her own self-esteem. “But you wouldn’t be happy,” he guessed.

  “No, I wouldn’t.” C.J. snapped the plastic lid back on the can. “I’d make a fair lawyer,” she judged. “I make a great FBI agent. And I love my work.” She returned the can to its rightful place and closed the refrigerator door. “I like catching the bad guys.” She turned away from him, measuring out two cups of water and pouring them into the coffeemaker. “Not finding loopholes for them.”

  He was behind her, so close that all she had to do was take a breath and she would find herself against him. Pinpricks of excitement raced up and down a conveyor belt along her spine.

  “What else do you like?”

  She could feel his breath on her neck. Everything within her tightened with anticipation. C.J. placed the coffeepot back on the counter and turned around. Her body brushed against his, sending electrical charges between them. She looked up into his face. “Long, slow kisses that go on forever.”

  He framed her face with his hands and lowered his mouth to hers.

  She felt as if he was making love to her just by kissing her lips. Slowly, deeply, until she felt as if she was completely anesthetized. Completely mesmerized. She stood up on her toes trying to draw in ever nuance, every taste, savor every delicious second that their lips were together.

  Warrick drew his mouth away and looked at her. Tension tightened around his body, squeezing. Begging for release. “Like that?”

  “Just like that,” she breathed.

  The next moment he swept C.J. into his arms and kissed her again, not so slowly, not so gently. The flame was lit and it traveled through both of them with lightning speed.

  C.J.’s arms went around his neck almost of their own volition, her heart pounding. It had been forever since he had made love with her. They had been dancing around each other as if that night in the motel wasn’t between them, as if they didn’t want this.

  They’d both been living a lie.

  They both wanted it.

  Breathing hard, C.J. moved back, creating just enough space to begin pulling off his clothes.

  His movements mimicked hers.

  She was making his head spin, his blood pump wildly through his veins. Drawing his head back a fraction, he grinned at her. “I guess this means I have to wait for the coffee.”

  Damn, if he hadn’t started this tonight, she would have. “Shut up and kiss me, Warrick,” she ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  And then the smile faded from his lips as something hot and strong took over. His mind and common sense faded somewhere behind a curtain. All that rem
ained were the needs he’d been grappling with.

  He yanked off her bra, her skirt, her blouse was already a casualty. His belly quickened as he felt her hands moving his zipper down the length of him, then stripping away his pants. Her hands felt cool against his flesh, hardening him even further.

  Warrick kicked his pants aside, separating their bodies just long enough to throw his shirt off his arms. The next heartbeat he was holding her against him again, his hands traveling along the length of her, making her his, everywhere he touched. Everywhere he promised to touch.

  Now. She wanted him now…inside of her, filling her. Making her think of nothing else, no serial killers, no responsibilities, no fears.

  Just Warrick.

  Just him.

  C.J. felt almost feral in his arms. She wanted him to feel as wild as she did at this very moment.

  Her mouth traveled along his mouth, his neck, his ear. Branding him. Driving him out of his head.

  It took everything he had not to throw her on the floor, to take her here, this moment. But that would be too soon, too quick. That would be placing his own pleasure above hers, and he wanted to pleasure her. Because seeing her twist and turn beneath his lips, wanting him, wanting more, heightened his own excitement beyond measure.

  Locked in a heated embrace, C.J. wound her legs around his torso. Desire surged. She could feel herself moistening, wanting him. The next moment she felt herself being lowered onto the kitchen table.

  C.J. could barely swallow. The throbbing pulse in her throat wouldn’t let her.

  Trying to draw air into her lungs, she moved her head away from him. “It’s too late for dinner,” she whispered.

  His eyes were dark with longing as he looked at her. There was only a hint of a teasing smile on his lips. “But not for a feast.”

  Before she could ask him what he meant, Warrick showed her.

  His mouth worked along her body, tempting, teasing, leaving his mark damply on every inch he passed. C.J. arched her body against his lips, tiny explosions beginning to take hold along her skin, within the very center of her.

  Her need for him grew to astronomical proportions. She reached for him, but he gently, firmly, moved her hands away, all the while continuing the long, sensual journey along her body.