McLain's Law

by Kylie Brant

  Relying on years of practice, Connor tuned out the mayor’s booming voice. He had been at loggerheads with McIntire before today and had no doubt that he would be again. There was no love lost between the two men, stemming from McIntire’s days as a defense attorney. In Connor’s estimation he had strayed over the line a time or two in his zeal for acquittals. He’d once all but accused Connor on the stand of falsifying evidence against his client. Which made his subsequent winning mayoral campaigns based on being tough on crime laughable. McIntire was an inveterate politician. He had the glib words and phony sincerity to tell the public what they wanted to hear.

  Connor had no sympathy for the tough race the mayor was currently involved in. His opponent was a minister, for God’s sake, who had a local radio show. He apparently had quite a following, because the two men were running neck and neck. Recent allegations of bribe taking by members of the mayor’s staff, selling his time for meetings with prominent businessmen and special interest groups, were hurting him. McIntire was being kept on the defensive for once, with less time to spend on his usual campaign speeches. And the gist of this meeting was that the lack of progress in the kidnappings was being regarded as a personal affront to the mayor, another black spot on his record.

  “Well, McLain, what about it?”

  Connor’s bored gaze rose slowly to meet the mayor’s belligerent one. It was obviously his turn to be raked over the coals.

  “What about what, Mayor?” he asked with mock politeness, causing McIntire to turn almost apoplectic.

  “I was just telling the mayor that you had your men following up every available lead,” Nick Kincannon, the police commissioner, put in smoothly.

  Connor’s gaze slid back to the mayor. Nick and Bob Lovitt, the chief of detectives, seemed to be waiting with held breath. Connor was amused to note that neither seemed to trust him not to start a war. Their concern was unnecessary. He wasn’t a yes man, but he knew how to play the department games when they were called for. And they were clearly called for here.

  Still, he took his time answering, aware that during his silence the mayor was turning purple. “I’m sure the mayor is aware of that, Commissioner. After all, that’s what he’s run his campaigns on all these years, isn’t it? A police department that’s tough on crime. And he’s certainly fulfilled his campaign promises. If I were to sit here and tell him that all was not going well, that would reflect back on the mayor’s office, wouldn’t it? And we wouldn’t want that. Not with the election so close and all.”

  The three men looked at each other, carefully avoiding looking at the mayor. All were aware of the truth of Connor’s statement, but neither of his superiors could believe he’d said it. They waited for an explosion.

  It wasn’t forthcoming. Larry McIntire leaned forward and asked through gritted teeth, “Is that what you’re telling me, Lieutenant? You’ve got leads that are panning out, you’re seeing progress in the case?” His tone was almost pleading.

  Connor looked at him stonily. “We’re progressing, Mayor. It’s going to take time. In some of those neighborhoods people don’t see anything, you know what I mean? We found a car abandoned last night that fits a description of the one used in the last kidnapping. The lab workers are going over it now.”

  Larry McIntire leaned back in his chair, suddenly expansive. “Well, that is good news, isn’t it? I’m sure you’ll have something to report later on that. That’s fine then. Fine.”

  Stonily Connor endured the hearty slap on the shoulder and the mayor’s insincere flattery. He was well aware that if the car hadn’t been found yesterday, leaving him with nothing new to report, his head would have been on the chopping block. For now, he was the fair-haired boy. He almost snorted out loud. God save him from politicians.

  The mayor and his people filed out of the office, followed by the police commissioner. When the door closed after them, Bob Lovitt looked at him soberly. “You almost walked too close to the line that time, McLain.”

  Connor heaved a sigh. He respected Bob Lovitt. The man went to the line for his detectives. That meant a lot. The last thing he wanted was for Bob to take more heat because of him.

  “What was I supposed to say, Chief? I can only report on what we’ve got, and I’m not about to apologize if the clues don’t come in to correspond with his latest press conference. Hell, you and I both know that the only reason the FBI hasn’t been called in on this is because McIntire wants the glory when the department cracks the case.”

  “Maybe so. But that doesn’t make the politics disappear.” Lovitt shook his head. “I know that you and McIntire aren’t best friends. But unless you want to be tossed off the case, you’d better toe the mark when you talk to him about this. The race is heating up, tempers are short. I was shocked when the mayor requested that you be put on the case, given your run-ins with him in the past. And I doubt he’d hesitate to remove you if you ticked him off. So watch it.”

  “Yeah,” Connor muttered, getting up to leave.

  “McLain?”

  Connor turned his head quizzically.

  The chief was surveying him shrewdly. “You look like you could use some sleep. Why don’t you get out of here on time for once and go home?”

  “Good idea,” he responded, as he headed out the door. “I have one stop to make first, though.” It was time he put aside this aversion he seemed to have to Michele Easton. Despite his reluctance, he planned to drop by her place on his way home to tell her the results of the lab tests. She deserved to be kept abreast of the developments stemming from the note, so he was going to have to get beyond the instant antagonism he felt in her presence. And while he was there, he would hold his tongue, even if he had to bite it in half. All he needed right now was some high-society princess screaming police harassment.

  * * *

  It was actually almost three hours before Connor reached Michele’s address. Preliminary information had come in on the car they had found abandoned. Since it had been reported stolen shortly before the kidnapping, the owner wouldn’t be much help. The Crime Scene Unit had found some hair and fibers and were working on linking them to the victims or to the sender of Michele’s note. Connor was exhausted but confident that they finally had a real lead.

  He knocked on Michele’s door and frowned as the force of his rap sent the door open several inches. She didn’t even have the door latched tightly, never mind locked. You would think after the scare she’d had, the woman would be more careful.

  Even as he thought it, Connor’s hand went to the butt of his revolver. In his profession it was second nature to be prepared when things didn’t appear quite right.

  “Miss Easton!” he barked loudly, even as he carefully entered the home. His scanned the entryway but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Michele’s purse and suit jacket lay across the top of a small desk to his right. When he received no response, he made his way slowly into the living room, where the scene that met his eyes made his mouth flatten in disapproval.

  Michele was asleep on the couch in front of the television, which was still on. A cat was curled at her feet, and it yawned delicately as it blinked at Connor. A more mundane scene he couldn’t imagine, and his hand dropped from his gun, even as he ground his teeth in irritation. His arrival and shouting hadn’t even roused the woman. His first instinct was to shake her awake, hard, and give her a tongue-lashing about safety. He mentally counted to ten. He had promised himself that this was going to be a purely professional visit, and he was going to remain calm, no matter what it cost him.

  He reached out to shake her, but his hand jerked as if he had been scalded. “God Almighty,” he whispered reverently. His mind hadn’t even registered what she was wearing until he touched her shoulder. Her bare shoulder, he corrected himself mentally. Somewhere on her trip to the couch she had managed to shed all her clothes except for the lacy peach slip and filmy nylons.

  Sweat broke out on his forehead, and when he swallowed, his tongue felt thick. The damn knot she had s
craped her hair back into was coming loose, and tendrils of ebony curled enticingly across one cheek and shoulder. He allowed himself one sweeping glance to ascertain that her legs were as gorgeous as he had feared. Long and smooth, they seemed to go on forever.

  He pulled his gaze firmly back to Michele’s face and forced himself to keep it there. As a result of his resolve, his hand was rougher than he had intended, his voice harsher.

  “Miss Easton? Michele? Wake up!”

  He frowned as he peered down at the still-sleeping woman. She must have been exhausted to sleep this soundly. The faint mauve shadows beneath the sooty fans of her lashes underscored the thought. But this was not, as he had imagined, a restful sleep. Her eye movements were rapid beneath the delicate lids, her breathing quick.

  Connor picked up her wrist and whistled soundlessly at the racing pulse he found beating beneath the fragile tracing of veins. She must be having a granddaddy of a nightmare.

  Even as he thought it, Michele began to tremble, soundlessly shaking her head in mute appeal. The whole couch moved with the force of her quaking, and Connor decided he had stood motionless long enough. He sat down on the couch next to her and grasped both shoulders, pulling her to a sitting position. He shook her slightly, repeating her name over and over.

  Michele felt as if she were being pulled down a dark vortex. As always, she was a helpless spectator to another’s suffering, the agony intensified by her inability to speak, to move. She wanted to cry out, to plead with someone to stop it, to help these children, to help them, help them . . . .

  “Michele! Wake up! Michele!”

  Her eyes fluttered open, then fixed on the stern face so close to her own. She didn’t even acknowledge the incongruity of finding Connor McLain in her dreams. Still in the grip of the nightmare that had overcome her, she grasped his face in both hands. “You have to help them. You have to find them. Time is running out.”

  Connor felt a flash of cold fear in the pit of his stomach at her words. Her flat statement, delivered so devoid of emotion, accompanied by the silvery, almost metallic sheen of her eyes, was eerie. Even as he was recovering, Michele seemed to visibly crumple, her hands falling away from him, the shaking intensifying.

  He pulled her onto his lap, his hard arms coming tightly around her. “It’s all right, Michele, it’s all right. It’s over.” He soothed her as he would a child waking from a nightmare.

  Michele wasn’t sure how long they sat like that, with her shielded in his arms, before she became completely aware. The pounding in her temples, which always accompanied the end of one of her dreams, was hammering away inside. The trembling in her limbs made even conversation difficult but still she tried. “What are you doing here?” she muttered, trying to strain away from him.

  Connor tightened his arms, making escape impossible. “I pushed open the door. You didn’t even have it closed,” he informed her, some of his annoyance creeping back into his voice. “Anyone could have come in and found you like this.”

  “Anyone did,” she returned, but the shaking in her limbs made even sarcasm impossible. She raised one hand to rub her temple, but the trembling made her attempts ineffectual.

  Connor stared down at her hard. “You have a headache?”

  “Stop screaming,” Michele pleaded querulously. “I always have a headache when I wake from one of those dreams.”

  Though his arms automatically tightened as her body continued its furious trembling, Connor felt frozen. This was it, then, a recurrence of what he had ridiculed as psychic claptrap, had dismissed as her imagination or, worse, a cover-up for her involvement. No one had ever claimed that Connor McLain was easy to fool, and he’d eat his gun if this scene tonight had been faked. There was no way she could have known he was coming, for one thing. And the shape she was in was a statement in itself.

  He became aware then of her faint attempts to free herself from his arms. He gathered her even closer. “Stop it. You’re in no shape to fight with me or anyone else tonight.”

  “I don’t need your help!”

  “You need someone’s help, and I’m here,” Connor announced flatly. “No wonder you have a headache, the way you keep your hair pulled back like that.” Michele felt him pull the remaining pins from her hair, and then it spilled down her back. Her protests were faint and easily ignored by him. His hands went next to her temples, massaging so gently that a surprised sigh came from her.

  She felt herself go limp, leaning more heavily into him. He was the last person she should trust, the last one she could afford to let her guard down around, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She couldn’t remember a time when been someone had been there to calm her after one of her dreams.

  Connor’s gentle ministrations managed what aspirin couldn’t. The loud clanging inside her head dulled to a tolerable throbbing. She was unable to control her shaking, though, and he seemed to sense that and moved his hands from her temples to pull her closer into his embrace, trying to still the shock-induced trembling.

  But no matter how tightly he held her, her body continued to be racked by shudders. Conner had seen enough shock victims to be fairly certain of what was afflicting her. God, if those dreams were vivid enough to cause this kind of physical response, he wondered grimly, what kind of emotional cost accompanied them? He’d had little experience calming people down; his was usually the kind of personality that riled them up. But he instinctively knew that Michele needed something, anything, to take her mind off the events of her sleep.

  He began to talk to her, softly, without much purpose, just a way of letting her know she wasn’t alone, to give her something else to focus her attention on. He wasn’t even aware of what he talked about—innocuous things, events from his childhood, from his work as a detective. He told her about his family, his parents and sister. His voice went on and on into the night.

  Michele gradually calmed in his hard grasp. She focused rigidly on his voice at first, welcoming his attempt to divert her attention. But at some point things began to change. She began to listen more to what he was saying than to the sound of his voice. She smiled to herself as she heard him recount some funny tale from his childhood. And slowly the tension eased from her limbs. The shaking lessened and eventually stopped. His voice lulled her into a semiconscious state, one where she was warm, safe. Who would ever have thought, she wondered drowsily, that Connor McLain could be consoling?

  As the aftershocks receded, however, the events of the dream became clearer, more focused. Michele hated to interrupt the unlikely truce that had developed between them, but she was forced to speak. She moved her head slightly, wincing at the renewed pain her action brought. “Two of them are gone now, Connor,” she whispered, unconsciously using his first name. “The youngest boy and Lucy are both gone. You have to find them, you have to, before the others . . .”

  Her words brought on renewed trembling, and Connor’s mouth tightened. “Shhh. Let it go for now. You’re in no shape for this discussion.” He looked down into her pleading gaze, and something indefinable twisted his insides. He wasn’t much good at soothing people, especially women. He lowered his lips to hers and gave her the only kind of consolation he knew.

  Michele froze in disbelief when those warm lips touched her own. What was he doing? This wasn’t . . . Her mouth softened even as her mental argument grew fuzzier. His mouth was chiseled perfection, alluringly soft over her own, enticingly sensual. He brushed his lips over hers softly, until unconsciously she followed their movement with her own.

  Connor’s mouth came down on her more firmly, and her senses careened wildly. Her own lips opened of their own volition, and his tongue pushed surely, strongly, into the sweet chamber. Even as she reveled in his sensual mastery, something inside cried out achingly. She’d been able to keep him at arm’s length before, but tasting him like this, sharing this with him, was going to make it impossible to go back to their previous footing. But, oh, the taste of him was so warm, and she had been so long in the cold. S
omething inside her was beckoned to the flame burning in him. Even knowing that, like a moth tempted too close to the flames, she, too, would be singed. She allowed conscious thought to drift away and gave herself up to the magic of his kiss.

  Connor was seared immediately by a heat so intense that he couldn’t believe he’d hardly touched her. Her lips were sweeter than any wine and just as addicting. He returned to them again and again, mindlessly drugging himself with their sweetness. When Michele’s lips opened under his, he felt his last rational thought swept away against the tide of need flooding him to taste, to sample, the sweet nectar within.

  Michele’s head arched beneath the sensual onslaught, and Connor mindlessly followed her movement, lowering her so she rested on the couch, one hip pressed intimately against him. Connor shifted uncomfortably, moving to lie half over her. Michele’s eyes fluttered open, and the gray orbs looked faintly surprised to find him so close. Connor noted with purely masculine satisfaction that they had lost that cool blankness she strove for around him. They were a smoky charcoal now, darkened with passion. He lowered his lips to her again, and Michele’s neck arched under the tender bites he placed there, up and down the cords of her throat. Her hands slid from his shoulders to tangle in his thick golden hair, guiding him back to the lips invitingly parted for him.

  Connor sealed their mouths again but soon found it wasn’t enough. One hand slid up her slim arm and across the delicate lace adorning the slip’s bodice. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and that discovery set fire to his insides. He deliberately skirted her breasts, aware with his last remnant of sanity that if he touched her like that he would be lost. Instead he tortured them both for long moments by tracing the lace lightly, his touch leaving a path of fire in its wake.

  He finally forced himself away from temptation, but it wasn’t long before his wandering hand had him in trouble again. He reached to stroke her silky leg, mentally damning the nylon sheathing it. Again and again he swept his palm up and down her thigh, each time pushing her slip a fraction higher, as their lips twisted together.