His Hot Number

by Shannon Hollis

  They just grinned and made themselves comfortable around the recording equipment. At least she’d had a little experience at being Caroline now. More than she ever wanted, and there was no end in sight.

  Lieutenant Bryan stuck his head in the door, speaking over his shoulder. “Black, you get in here with her. You’re supposed to be together. If he wants to talk to you, you’d better be on hand.”

  Great. So much for being able to close her eyes and pretend the audience wasn’t there.

  Kellan strode to a chair and sat, tilting it back on its hind legs. He watched as she dialed the numbers of O’Reilly’s latest cell phone, the number he’d slipped her last night during the meet at the Dominion Hotel.

  She had two rings in which to become Caroline, but with Kellan in the room watching her it seemed easier. Particularly since he was looking at her with that intent gaze.

  Complete concentration.

  Her lover, watching her call another man.

  The call clicked through. “Yeah?”

  “Richard,” she purred.

  “Well, hello, babe. Couldn’t even wait a day, could you?”

  “I said I’d ring you back. And I always keep my promises.”

  “I’ll hold you to that. You promised me a blow job, if I remember right.”

  Linn didn’t even flinch at the knowledge that that remark had been recorded, the girls in the basement would transcribe it, and it would go on permanent record to be used as evidence in court. There were times when denial was a very useful skill.

  “All in good time, darling. I’m calling about the invitation to your little house party.”

  “Yeah? You going to come?”

  “If you were serious about it, I’d love to. Dean says the wine country is lovely, and of course I’ve never been.”

  “Unlike Dean, I don’t waste a lot of time staring at the scenery. Napa’s for business. It’s my friend’s place when he’s in Northern Cal. He has a place in Miami, too, but sometimes it gets hot down there.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “He’s invited us for Thursday through Sunday.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “No, I’ll send a car for you. I treat a lady right.”

  “Dean, too?”

  O’Reilly sighed noisily. “Yeah, Dean, too. But when you have a few days with me you’ll dump that guy.”

  “You should really treat your customers better, darling.”

  “Oh, I am. He gets to meet my friend, we talk business, everybody’s happy. But what’s between you and me happens outside of that.”

  “And what is between you and me?”

  “That blow job, for starters. And after that, whatever you want.”

  She laughed, low and inviting. “So Thursday morning, then? The limo?”

  “Yeah. Where are you?”

  Without missing a beat, she said, “At Dean’s, of course,” and gave him the address of CLEU’s temporary location in the Marina district, where Dean had been seen entering and exiting often enough to give the impression he lived there.

  “I’ll send it for noon. See you up there, babe.”

  “I’ll be ready for you, darling.” She rang off, and the tape operator gave Bryan the thumbs-up. The woman punched another line and took the phone company’s incoming call.

  “We got a lock on his location.” The operator’s plastic nametag read Claire Bennet, Linn saw as she joined them.

  “Do you want us to go?” Danny asked.

  Bryan shook his head. “Nah, he’ll be long gone. Where was he?” he asked Ms. Bennet.

  “Looks like a gym. Wonderbodies, south of Market.”

  “We’ll go with our original plan. For now, you guys better get ready for a trip. Kowalski and Maxwell, you’re in the van. Macormick, you’ll be in radio contact here. Black and Nichols, get yourselves down to the house. You’ve got a day to prep for this.”

  “I’m in court tomorrow,” Linn remembered suddenly. “A Santa Rita case.”

  “Fine, but you’ll stay at the house tomorrow night and let Black brief you as thoroughly as possible. If O’Reilly has half a brain, which I know he does, he’ll have people around there Thursday morning. I want you looking like you’re really staying there.”

  And that Kellan Black lives there.

  Linn pushed the thought out of her mind. She was going to keep this whole operation on a businesslike basis if it killed her. The safe house had more than one bedroom and a couch besides. They could coexist just fine as long as he didn’t kiss her or talk to her through the bathroom door or any of his other dangerous behaviors that made her knees and her resolve weaken. She’d tell him calmly and unemotionally that she wasn’t prepared for anything but a business relationship.

  Sure she would.

  Just as soon as she came up with the strength to do it.

  A DAY IN COURT in Santa Rita went a long way to restoring Linn’s sanity and bringing her back to the real world of admissible evidence and sentencing and pleas. She returned to the SRPD building downtown afterward, to shoot the breeze with her former workmates and look up Natalie Wong.

  The identification expert, whose specialty was the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS for short, looked up from her screen and smiled in delight when Linn paused in the lab’s doorway.

  “Linn!” They hugged, and Nat stood back a little to look her over. “You’ve lost weight. But it looks like the big city suits you.”

  Linn shook her head and sank into the guest chair in front of Natalie’s workstation. “I had to go through PT all over again. I worked out before, but not like this. I haven’t had a butt this firm since I was twenty.”

  “Gee, a whole eight years ago. Give me a break.” Natalie resumed her seat and tilted the chair as far as its ergonomically correct back would allow. “So, what’s new?”

  Linn rolled her eyes. “Where do I start?”

  “I haven’t had e-mail from you in a week. Something must be going on.”

  “I’ve been trying to survive at CLEU. It’s not easy.”

  “You survived initiation here. Both of us did. CLEU can’t be any worse.”

  “It’s worse. At least here they didn’t expect me to put on a red silk dress and seduce a drug runner.”

  Natalie blinked. “No kidding.”

  “And that’s just the beginning. My team lead and I are playing a couple and we’re supposed to go up to Napa to this house party and meet the person that we hope is the importer.”

  Natalie rocked forward and the mechanism under her chair made a thunking noise. “What’s wrong with that? Sounds like a normal operation to me.”

  “I know what to do with the criminal, even though he thinks he’s God’s gift to women. It’s my lead I’m concerned about.”

  “Why?”

  “For starters, when he walks into a room it’s way too easy to forget about the regulations. He’s tall and built and gorgeous, and when he looks at me all I want to do is crawl into his lap.”

  “And have you?”

  “Yes.” Linn’s voice was glum. “More than once.” She looked up. “Stop that.”

  Natalie attempted to wipe the grin off her face. “I’m not laughing. This is serious. But you know what it sounds like to me?”

  “An internal investigation waiting to happen?”

  “No, dear heart. It sounds like maybe you’ve met your match. Someone you can’t freeze with that look you have. Roddy Baker hasn’t thawed yet, and you laid it on him a year ago.”

  “Roddy Baker needed it.”

  “If you’re climbing into this guy’s lap, maybe he’s different. Maybe he’s the one for you.”

  Linn moved Natalie’s stapler to the right a few inches, then back to its original position. “It sounds like you’ve been talking to my sister.”

  “Your sister is a woman of discernment. So am I. Get a clue.”

  Linn looked up. “That’s what they have on their caps. Get a CLEU.”

  “Stop ch
anging the subject. So the guy is your team lead. Aside from tingles where they shouldn’t be, what do you think of him?”

  Linn opened her hands, palm up. “The guys have already given me the lowdown. He’s a short-term guy with a preference for out-of-town operators. But I still don’t know why…” Her voice trailed away.

  If he preferred short-term relationships, then pursuing Caroline was understandable. But what about last night? What about the guy who knew the Latin names of flowers and liked the smell of lime-scented soap on her? She’d give a lot to know if he revealed that kind of thing to his out-of-town flings.

  “Don’t know what?” Natalie prompted.

  “Just some things he says and does that make me wonder.”

  “Okay, that’s him. What about you?”

  “I could fall,” Linn confessed finally. “Against my better judgment. Tessa says I’m running away from emotional involvement and making up excuses.”

  “Tessa’s probably not half in love with her boss.”

  “I’m not half in love with him!”

  Natalie grinned. “Okay, okay. You’re not. Admitting you could fall is a major concession on your part, though.”

  “For all the good it does me. He’s still my lead.”

  “If you’re discreet, you can pull it off.”

  Linn narrowed her eyes at her friend. “This sounds like the voice of experience.”

  “It is.”

  The two women exchanged a long look. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Linn said at last. She ran through all the possibilities in her mind, her mental Rolodex flipping cards until it stopped at one. “Wait. Don’t tell me. Terrance Lee?”

  Nat nodded and glanced at the open door. She lowered her voice. “The very same. We’ll be having our two-year anniversary shortly. And celebrating it very quietly and very far away from Santa Rita PD.”

  Linn felt a little winded. Terrance Lee had been her boss. The head of the detective division. He was experienced and sharp and completely by the book, or at least she’d thought so until now. But he’d always had a soft spot for Natalie, had sent work her way that would be sure to get her noticed by the brass. He’d even asked for her as the ident specialist on a suspected parental abduction that had been in all the papers, and her analysis of a partial print had helped them land the real perpetrator.

  “Wow,” she said slowly. “Terrance Lee.”

  “So you see, it can be done.”

  “Right, until it goes bad and I have to request a transfer.”

  “Linn Nichols, you need to stop looking at things in terms of when they’re going to end. That’s a relic from your parents being so undependable and you know it. You can’t operate that way all the time in real life.”

  “I’m just being a realist.”

  “Pessimist. Not the same thing,” Nat said, shaking her head.

  “Listen to you. Real life is about playing by the rules. Watching where the boundaries are. Setting your own.”

  “So set them a little further out.”

  “Then what’s the point of abiding by the rules?”

  “Sometimes there isn’t a point. Sometimes you have to find out what you want and pursue it.”

  “Spoken like a true anarchist. No rules. Do what you want. That’s what we’re here for, Nat. To rein in all the people who do exactly that.”

  “I’m not talking about the law. I’m talking about ourselves. Sometimes it’s worth the risk if what you want is out there a little way. Sometimes you just have to step outside the boundaries and go for it.”

  “The way you did.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Are you guys getting married?”

  Nat gave her another don’t-change-the-subject look. “We’ve talked about it. Maybe.”

  “And you think I should break the rules and see where it takes me. You are a stellar example of law enforcement ethics at their best, Natalie Wong.”

  “No, I’m not.” She grinned at Linn. “I’m a woman in love. And believe me, the risks are worth it.”

  9

  THE RISKS ARE WORTH IT.

  Linn parked in the underground garage of the temporary house and hefted her black rolling suitcase out of the back of the SUV. Nat and Terrence Lee. Who knew?

  Sure, he was pushing fifty and Natalie had just thrown a Dirty Thirties party for herself, inviting Linn and several of their closest girlfriends only a few months before. But he and Nat were both smart and intuitive, and they had the same way of looking at a case that brought success and kudos to the department. They were part of a team in a way that Linn wanted to be and wasn’t with her own co-workers at CLEU.

  As proven by the continued absence of the navy-blue ball cap.

  And yet it was obvious Terrence satisfied Natalie in a way that a younger man couldn’t. That smile of hers had held deep happiness and a sense of rightness about her choices.

  Linn bumped the suitcase up the concrete stairs and tried not to envy her too much.

  The door at the top opened. “Here, let me take that.” Kellan hefted the heavy bag as if it weighed nothing, and she followed him inside.

  She’d toured the house the week she’d signed on, and it hadn’t changed. There were three bedrooms in the second-floor walk-up, two for the undercover operators and one for the surveillance equipment. One and a half baths, a living room, a kitchen. Barebones furniture.

  Pretty typical, even if CLEU was better funded than many a State agency she could name. But the agency’s money went toward overtime and flash rolls and all the innumerable things that made covert operations successful. Not furniture and carpet.

  She should be grateful the walk-up had three bedrooms and not two. Or one. She’d slept with recording equipment before, and it wasn’t an experience she wanted to repeat very often.

  “I took the room at the back,” Kellan said over his shoulder. He wheeled her bag into the other room. “Hope this is okay.”

  “It’s fine.” Two doors between them was a good thing.

  He stood the suitcase up at the foot of the bed, which hadn’t been made up yet. A flat stack of sheets and blankets sat on the bare mattress. The only other piece of furniture was a bureau. The closet door was folded back, and a couple of empty hangers pinged against each other as they moved in the breeze from the open window.

  It was amazing how much of the eight-by-ten space Kellan took up. He wore a red tank top that dipped low over his pecs and showed a furred chest that could make a grown woman whimper. And shorts. Black shorts that showed off thighs like iron—beautifully sculpted, rugged iron.

  She, on the other hand, was still dressed in the navy pantsuit and white blouse she’d worn to court that afternoon. He was hot and sexy and virile. She was cold and businesslike and had a high white collar.

  But put them in the same room together, plastered all over one another, and he would melt her soon enough. He’d unbutton the blouse and warm her skin and heat her blood to the screaming point, and the room would be full of steam as they combusted togeth—

  “Are you okay?” He leaned over a little to look into her eyes. “Do I have something on my face?”

  “What?” Dear God. She had to learn to control her expression, not to mention the fantasies that were happening behind it. She lifted the suitcase onto the bed and began to fiddle with the zipper. “I was just thinking about something else.”

  “What kind of clothes do you have in there?”

  She fixed him with a glance that in no way resembled the unfocused weirdness of a moment before. “Appropriate ones.”

  “Like what?”

  “Why are clothes so important to you? What difference does it make? I know what Caroline wears.”

  “If you were in court today, you didn’t have time to go shopping. And I’m betting what Caroline wears doesn’t normally live in your closet.”

  “Don’t bet on horses,” she suggested calmly. “As it happens, I have a few things.” The zipper screeched around its track, and she flippe
d open the suitcase. “White shirt, black bra.” She slid her palm under each item and lifted it like a pizza on a tray. “Dress, red. Sundress, white. Jeans, tight. One pair of shorts, khaki. Two T-shirts. One tank top. One blouse, see-through.” Deep breaths, through the nose. “Happy?”

  “One investigator, happy. Your clothes are fine. Geez, lighten up.”

  She wanted to take the neatly rolled T-shirts and beat him about the ears with them. “I am not incompetent. Quit trying to make me feel as if I am. Concentrate on the big stuff, like keeping us alive this weekend.”

  One sable eyebrow rose, disappearing into the shaggy mane that flopped into his eye. “I make you feel incompetent?”

  “This control thing you have.”

  “We talked about this before.”

  “Yes, but it didn’t sink in. That’s the effect that control has on people, Kellan. It makes them feel incompetent when you ride right over their choices and thoughts.”

  “Okay, how’s this. Do you feel like ordering in something to eat? The State doesn’t stock this place and I’m no cook.”

  “Chinese would be great.”

  “I was thinking more of a pizza.”

  She threw her hands in the air. “See, that’s just what I mean! You give me a choice and take it away again. Don’t bother next time and save me the grief.”

  He frowned a little, studying her as if she were something new and puzzling. “If you want Chinese, that’s okay, too.”

  “Yes. I. Want. Chinese.”

  “Women,” he muttered as he went out of the room. She could hear him hunting around for a phone book. “Always so fussy.”

  When the food came, it was hot and smelled wonderful. While Kellan got out his stacks of files for a working meal, Linn spooned Szechuan beef and tender bok choi simmered in garlic over the hills of steaming rice on each paper plate.

  After getting her own way over the ethnicity of the food, she’d let him choose the dishes. It didn’t do to overwhelm a man with too much information. Fortunately, his favorites and hers seemed to be pretty similar.

  “I’m glad you like things hot,” she told him over O’Reilly’s open folder. “I love red chili and fresh veggies. If you were the kind of guy who thought chicken balls were Chinese food, I’d have gone and got that pizza.”