Lethal Attraction: Against the RulesFatal Affair

by Linda Howard

  “No. I like having you here, and he doesn’t really care, despite the grief he might give you.”

  “I need to go home at some point to get some clothes and make sure the condo association took care of getting the windows fixed.”

  “We can arrange that.” She sat up and stretched. “I’m going to grab a shower. Care to join me?”

  “I’d love to, but I’m not going to push my luck. I’ll go after you.”

  “Wimp.”

  “Yep.”

  She laughed as she slipped into a robe, and the sound warmed him. He was surprised to realize she had made him feel better, even as the sickening images from the dream lingered. After Sam went into the bathroom, he sat up, gripping his pounding head. The concussion they’d called minor was making a major statement, and whatever they’d used to numb the cut over his eye had worn off, leaving a dull, throbbing ache.

  He felt kind of foolish about unloading on Sam, but she hadn’t seemed to mind. Having someone to share the ups and downs with was something he could get used to—as long as that someone was her.

  He stood up and groaned when his injured foot protested. Reaching for his jeans, he pulled them on and took a good look around the messy room. Sam had a way of exploding into a space, which was in direct conflict with his need for order. Beginning with the clothes piled on the floor, he went to work on the clutter. By the time she emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later, the place was almost livable.

  Her eyes all but popped out of her skull. “It’s like you can’t help yourself!”

  “Just straightening up. No biggie.”

  “I won’t be able to find anything!”

  “You couldn’t find anything before.”

  “I knew exactly where everything was.”

  “No way,” he scoffed. “You’re a slob, Samantha.” He bunched the towel she had wrapped around her into his fist and tugged her close enough to kiss. “A sexy, gorgeous slob, but a slob nonetheless.”

  Pouting, she tried to break free of him. “Just because I’m not an anal retentive freakazoid, doesn’t mean I’m a slob.”

  “Freakazoid? I’m hurt.” With another hard kiss he released her so she could get dressed. “This is going to be a problem when we live together.”

  “Live together?” she sputtered, choking on the words. “Where the hell did that come from?”

  “You don’t have to act like the idea is totally repulsive.”

  She shoved her long legs into jeans. “We haven’t even been together a week, Nick. I mean…come on.”

  Not wanting her to see that she’d hurt him by being so dismissive, he turned away from her to look out the window. He churned with things he’d like to say to her, arguments and persuasions she was clearly not ready to hear. As he stared out into the darkness, a shadow across the street caught his eye. Zeroing in for a closer look, he realized someone was watching the house. He ignored the screaming pain in his foot and the pounding in his head when he bolted for the door and flew down the stairs.

  Sam called out to him.

  Blasting through the front door and down the ramp, he was almost hit by a car as he ran into the street. The blare of the car’s horn startled him, taking his attention off the shadow for just an instant, but that was all it took.

  “Watch out, asshole!” the driver yelled out the car window.

  By the time Nick recovered his bearings the shadow was long gone.

  “Shit! Son of a bitch!”

  “What’re you doing?” Sam screamed from the porch.

  “Someone was there,” he said, his breath coming out in white puffs in the cold air. “I saw him. Watching the house.”

  “So you just run out half-cocked, not to mention half-dressed?”

  “What else was I supposed to do?”

  She had her hands on her hips in a gesture he recognized by now as her seriously pissed stance. “Um, I don’t know. Maybe tell the cop who was in the room with you?”

  He limped back to the ramp and started up to where she waited for him. “I didn’t think of it. All I thought about was getting him.”

  “And what were you going to do with him once you got him?”

  Squirming under the heat of her blue-eyed glare, he shrugged. “I would’ve figured something out.”

  “That’s exactly how civilians get themselves killed by the hundreds every year, thinking they can take the law into their own hands.”

  “I don’t need you to lecture me or to keep using the word civilian like it’s some kind of vermin.”

  “Vermin’s got to be smarter than you just were.”

  “I almost had him.”

  “You almost got flattened by a car!”

  Fuming, they stood there spitting nails at each other.

  “Um, ’scuse me, but ah, I’m back,” Freddie said from the sidewalk. “You said I should come here and, um…”

  “Come up,” Sam said, never taking her eyes off Nick. “Go in. I’ll be right there.”

  “Gotcha, boss,” Freddie said with a sympathetic smile for Nick as he went by them. “Good to see you again, Mr. Cappuano.”

  “Likewise,” Nick said, still focused on Sam. “And you can call me Nick.”

  “You should’ve told me what you saw,” Sam said after the door closed behind Freddie. “If you had, I could’ve called it in, and maybe we would’ve nabbed him. Instead, you go off on a Rambo mission that yielded squat.”

  Nick contemplated that. “You might have a point.”

  “I might? Really? Wow, thanks.”

  “I’m sorry, all right?” He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “I just reacted. So shoot me for wanting to get whoever is stalking you.”

  “How do you know they’re not stalking you?”

  “Because I’m a whole lot more boring than you are.”

  “You’re not boring. Stupid occasionally, but never boring.”

  “Thank you. I think.”

  “Did you get a good look at him?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing but a shadow, but that shadow was definitely watching this house.”

  “If you see him again, tell me.” She pinched his chest hair and tugged just hard enough to raise him to his tiptoes and bring tears to his eyes. “Don’t you dare risk yourself like that again. You got me?”

  “I got it,” he said through gritted teeth. After she released him, he rubbed a hand over his chest. “I only let you get away with that shit because I was taught it’s bad manners to flatten a woman, even if she deserves it.”

  “Whatever,” she retorted on her way back into the house where Skip, Celia and Freddie waited for them.

  Skip’s sharp eyes skirted over Nick’s bare chest and feet.

  “Um, I’m going to go find a shirt,” Nick said, starting up the stairs.

  “Might not be a bad idea,” Skip said.

  “Leave him alone, Dad,” Sam said. “He’s already convinced you’re going to have him killed.”

  “Also not a bad idea. Why didn’t I think of it?”

  “Dad…”

  “Relax and let me have some fun with the boy, will you? I so rarely get to have any fun these days.”

  Freddie smirked.

  “What’re you smiling at, Cruz?”

  The smile faded. “Not a thing, ma’am. Not one thing.”

  “I assume you’re not just here to bum another meal. What’ve you got for me?”

  “Some of the others are heading over from HQ to help out,” he said. “Want me to wait and brief everyone at the same time?”

  “Give me the highlights.”

  By the time he had run through it, she had paced a path in the living room rug.

  “I was thinking on the plane ride home,” Freddie said, “that the other women he dated were like substitutes for the one he couldn’t have. All of them resemble her in basic features, and I’m no shrink, but maybe he turned on the kink with them because he was frustrated he couldn’t be with the one he wanted.”

 
; “That’s probably why he freaked when Natalie pressured him about getting married. In his own twisted way, he felt like he was already married, even if he was unfaithful to her. I mean, how does he marry someone else when she’s off raising his kid in Siberia?”

  Nick came down the stairs, his hair wet from the shower.

  “You heard all that?” Sam asked, alarmed by his pale face and flat eyes.

  “Enough to get the gist.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, surprised when he shook off her sympathy.

  “Don’t protect me. Do your job. Find out who did it.”

  “Okay,” she said, understanding that he was absorbing the blow the best way he knew how. Turning back to Freddie, she was interrupted when the front door swung open. In flooded most of the HQ detectives, carrying platters of food, six packs of beer and soda, and armloads of chips. Each of them paused to squeeze Skip’s hand on their way into the kitchen to deposit the food.

  “What the hell is this?” she asked Gonzo.

  “They take a stab at you, they take one at all of us,” he said, his chocolate brown eyes fierce. “Everyone’s on their own time. Give us something to do.”

  Touched and on the verge of choking up, she said, “Thank you.”

  “They posted the LT list today. Congratulations.”

  “You’ll be there soon enough,” she said with a twinge of guilt over how she’d gotten there. Gonzo made detective a couple of years after her, so at least she hadn’t snagged a spot from him. “For sure.”

  He shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  “There was someone out there.” She gestured to the door. “Nick saw him watching the house. He went vigilante on me and scared the guy off.”

  “I’ll call it in and get someone posted outside.”

  “If it was just me, I wouldn’t want it. But my dad’s here and Celia…”

  “Say no more. We’re on it.” He glanced over at Nick. “So. You and the witness, huh?”

  She winced. “Don’t.”

  Gonzo’s handsome face lit up with amusement. “I won’t, but others will. You have to know that.”

  “Hopefully, the gossip mill will run its course and the story will die a natural death when someone else fucks up.”

  “Not before you take some serious abuse.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Sam?” Nick said. “Why don’t you come have something to eat?”

  “He likes to feed me,” she whispered to Gonzo.

  “Nothing wrong with that.”

  Thirty minutes later, after everyone had eaten, Sam called them into the living room. “Let’s get back to work.”

  “Before we do that,” Freddie raised his Coke bottle in salute to Sam, “a toast to my partner, soon-to-be Lieutenant Holland.”

  As Sam glared at him and plotted his slow, painful death, the room erupted into applause and whistles. She glanced at her father and found him watching her, his eyes bright with emotion.

  He nodded with approval and pleasure—more pleasure than she’d seen on his face in two years.

  “All right,” she said, putting a stop to the merriment before they forgot they were there to work on a homicide. “Thanks for the food, the toast and the help. I appreciate it. Before we go any further, I need to ask if you all mind that Nick is here. He’s been very helpful to us on the investigation—”

  “He’s been critical,” Freddie said.

  Sam sent him a grateful smile. “Still, if anyone’s uncomfortable…”

  “No problem for me,” Gonzo said.

  The others mumbled their agreement.

  Sam released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and turned to Freddie. “In that case, Cruz, let’s hear what you found out in Chicago.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “I also dug into the girlfriends like you asked me to,” Freddie said, consulting his notebook. “Tara Davenport has no tattoos or unusual piercings. The people she says she was with on the night of the murder confirm her story, and security tapes show her arriving home at 10:18 and leaving again at 9:33 the next morning. Elin Svendsen’s date, Jimmy Chen, a major muscle head, confirmed they had dinner and went to a dance club for a couple of hours. He dropped her off at her apartment just after two in the morning. The building has minimal security and no video, so I couldn’t confirm that she stayed in for the rest of the night. She has a tattoo on her left breast—a heart with a Cupid’s arrow—and both nipples are pierced.”

  “I don’t even want to know how you found that out,” Sam said, drawing chuckles from the other detectives.

  “Not the way I would’ve preferred, that’s for sure.”

  “Go, Cruz!” Detective Arnold said with a bark of laughter.

  “Aw, our little boy’s growing up,” Gonzo said, dabbing at a pretend tear.

  “Up yours, Gonzo.”

  In deference to her partner, Sam stifled the urge to laugh. “Is that it?”

  “You didn’t tell me to,” Freddie continued, “but I dug a little deeper on Natalie Jordan. St. Clair was her maiden name, and I got a hit on that. Apparently our girl Natalie lost her college boyfriend in a suspicious fire in Maui about fifteen years ago.”

  “You don’t say.” Blood zipped through Sam’s veins as pieces began to fall into place. Whether they were the right pieces, she’d soon find out.

  “She and the senator had been broken up for years when he was killed,” Skip said. “Hardly the same thing.”

  “True,” Sam said. “Give us the details on the fire, Cruz.”

  “Brad Foster, age twenty-one, killed in a suspicious house fire while on a two-week vacation in Maui with Natalie St. Clair.”

  “Two weeks in Maui for a couple of college kids?” Gonzo asked with a low whistle.

  “Apparently, Foster’s family was loaded. His parents owned the beach house. Anyway, from the reports I found in the newspaper, Natalie went out for a morning walk and while she was gone the house went up. Police suspected arson but couldn’t prove it. Her alibi for the time of the fire was flimsy. They looked really closely at her but never charged her with anything.”

  “Good work, Cruz,” Sam said. “We’ll have another chat with Mrs. Jordan tomorrow.”

  “I should also add that I found no unsolved dismemberment cases in the District, Virginia or Maryland,” Freddie said. “I can widen the search if you think it’s worth it.”

  “Hold off on that for now. Gonzo, what do you have from the search of O’Connor’s cabin?”

  “Nothing other than some additional references to the kid, Thomas—cards, letters, artwork from when he was younger—but you’ve already got that.”

  “What about the immigration bill, Dad?”

  Skip took them through the finer points of the proposed law. “There’s a lot of passion on both sides of this issue. There are those who feel that keeping our borders open to people in need is what this country is all about—‘give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…’” When he was greeted with blank stares, he added, “Emma Lazarus? The poem engraved on the Statue of Liberty? Did you people go to school?” Rolling his eyes, he continued. “The other side argues that immigrants are a drain on the system, that charity should begin at home and we can’t take care of the people who are already here.”

  “Would killing the senator kill the bill, too?” Sam asked Nick.

  “That’s exactly what it did. We had it sewn up by one vote. The Senate’s in recess until January. Depending on who they get to take John’s seat and whether he or she supports the bill, we might get lucky and get it back to the floor for a vote sometime next year. But either way, the supporters will have to start all over to make sure they have the votes. Even a month is a long time in politics—plenty of time for people to change their minds.”

  “So if someone was out to stop it altogether, killing him would accomplish that,” Sam said.

  “It’ll certainly delay it indefinitely. Getting a bill thro
ugh committee and on to the floor for a vote is no simple process. It took more than a year of writing, rewriting, compromising, meetings with various lobbies and interest groups, more compromise. Not simple.”

  Listening to him, Sam had a whole new appreciation for how John’s death had affected Nick’s professional life. The failure to pass the immigration bill had to be a bitter defeat on top of the personal tragedy. “In that case, his murder seems too well timed to be coincidental.”

  “Someone couldn’t bear to see him get this win, you mean,” Freddie said.

  “Which takes us right back to his brother Terry,” Sam said.

  Nick shook his head.

  “Speak,” Sam said.

  “I’ve said this before—Terry doesn’t have the balls to kill his brother. He’s an overgrown boy trying to live in a man’s world. This would take planning and foresight. Terry’s idea of making a plan is deciding which bar to hit on a given night.”

  “Still,” Sam said, “he had motive, opportunity, a key and can’t produce his alibi. I want to bring him in tomorrow morning for a formal interview.”

  “Can’t that wait until after the funeral?” Nick asked, beseeching her with those hazel eyes of his.

  “No. I’m sorry. I wish I could spare the O’Connors any more grief, but the minute they lied to me about Thomas, they lost the right to that courtesy. In fact, I could charge them with obstruction of justice.”

  “But you won’t,” Nick said stiffly.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “I noticed Terry never completed the court-ordered safe driving school after his DUI,” Freddie said.

  Sam smiled as she turned to Gonzo and Arnold. “Will you pick up Terry O’Connor in the morning? While he’s our guest, we’ll have another chat with him about his alibi. Coordinate with Loudoun County.”

  “Can do,” Arnold said.

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree,” Nick said, frustration all but rippling from him.

  “So noted.” To the others, she said, “What’ve we got on the bombing?”

  Higgins gave them an in-depth analysis of the four crude, homemade bombs they’d found attached to Sam’s car and Nick’s. “We got a partial print off one of the EDs on Mr. Cappuano’s car, and we’re running it through AFIS now,” he said, referring to the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.