by Cara Summers
Impatience flared but he tamped it down.
“We’re smart. We’re adults.”
Her fingers had tensed in his.
“What we’re feeling right now—”
“Is real,” he insisted.
“Perhaps. But it could fade when the crisis is over.”
Knowing the value of keeping an opponent off balance, Jase raised their joined hands and kissed her fingers. “You may be right. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
But he was pretty sure his feelings weren’t going to fade. He’d just have to convince her that hers weren’t going to either. “We have an early morning. I think we should go to bed.”
“I thought you’d never ask.” Her hands were already busy, gripping the hem of his T-shirt and pulling it up and over his head. But he intended to keep the pace slow. Even when they tumbled onto the bed and began to strip off the rest of their clothes, he kept nibbling her mouth, tasting, teasing. He wanted, no, he needed to savor her—something he hadn’t allowed himself to do before.
Her taste was familiar now, sweet, potent, drugging. And yet each time their mouths clung, separated, then fused again, there was something new.
Her hands moved faster than his and he felt the energy in her, heard her moan his name and sensed the imminence of the all-consuming fire. Still, he fought to keep it at bay.
“You don’t have to seduce me,” she whispered.
But he did. He wasn’t sure if it was for her or him. But he did.
She framed his face with her hands and whispered against his mouth, “I want you.”
The three words took his breath away as surely as a sucker punch to the gut. He felt his head spin, his heartbeat quicken. He levered himself up far enough that he could see her. In the moonlight pouring through the window, her skin was pale, delicate. Her hair the color of spun gold. He took out the pins and threaded his fingers through it.
“Jase…”
“I just want to look and touch.” With one finger, he traced her forehead, her cheekbones, then moved along her jawline to her throat where her pulse beat hard and fast. He continued to touch her—breasts, stomach, thighs—and then he took his mouth on the same journey. Desire stabbed through him when the hands on his shoulders went lax and she began to tremble. Little by little he lost himself in the sound of her breath catching, then releasing on the whisper of his name.
STEEPED in sensation, Maddie felt herself begin to float. This wasn’t what she’d expected, wasn’t what she’d thought she wanted. Even when his mouth finally returned to hers, there were so many new things to absorb. The flavor of his lips was different, and it went to her head like wine. Totally seduced, she began to run her hands over him, learning his secrets just as he was learning hers. Wherever she touched, he trembled. Wherever she tasted, he shuddered.
“Maddie,” he murmured as he made a place for himself between her legs and entered her. His face, his eyes filled her vision, her world.
Even then, they moved slowly, watching each other as they climbed higher and higher. When they drew close to the edge, he lowered his mouth to hers and with one final shudder, they tumbled over together.
AFTERWARD, Jase held Maddie tightly, her head resting on his chest, her legs still tangled with his. One of his hands was pressed against the small of her back, holding her in place; the other was in her hair. The steadiness of her breathing told him that she was sleeping. But his own mind wouldn’t shut down.
Instead of trying to fight his wakefulness, he let his mind run through some of the things they’d learned. His gut instinct told him that Maddie had been right all along, and Eva’s appointment calendar had given them a vital clue.
His instincts also told him that time was running out. Eva’s hit-and-run had been carefully and methodically planned. Hiring a professional hit had also taken planning. But the person who’d tried to run Maddie down had taken a huge risk by using the same car.
A killer driven to desperate measures was more dangerous than a careful and methodical one.
Maddie sighed, then settled.
And they hadn’t narrowed their list of suspects down one bit.
The digital clock on the night stand read 2:53 a.m. If he wasn’t going to sleep, there was work he could be doing. Instead of waiting until morning to give Dino the job, he could be finding out what he could about the Golden Spider club and why Eva had been so worried about it during the last few weeks of her life.
But he simply didn’t want to move.
As long as they were here in bed together, he could keep her safe.
And she was his. She’d been his from the moment she’d climbed mistakenly into his bed. Only it hadn’t been a mistake. It had been right. She’d been right for him from the beginning. The certainty of that moved through him like a slow-running river. There were things he wanted to tell her. Needed to tell her. But it wasn’t the time. Not just because a killer still had her in his sights, but because her life had turned into chaos.
Instinctively, he held her even closer. Patience was a virtue he’d cultivated over the years. He’d needed it when he’d been working special ops. He also needed it in his business.
But he wondered just how long he could wait before he settled things with Maddie.
MADDIE STIFLED a yawn as Jase hurried her along 50th Street. He’d woken her at six-thirty and told her to get ready. The attentive lover from the night before had morphed into security-agent man again. He’d already showered and shaved, and while she gulped room-service coffee and struggled to catch up, he’d been on his phone—to Dino and Stanton she supposed.
It wasn’t until the cab had dropped them off on Fifth Avenue around the block from Eva Ware Designs that the caffeine finally began to clear the fog out of Maddie’s brain. She’d asked why the taxi hadn’t dropped them off directly in front of the store, and Jase explained that the store was probably being watched.
The blunt reminder that she was still a target had her nerves knotting and her mind going on full alert. Somehow working to decipher her mother’s appointment calendar and then making love with Jase had pushed fear about the imminent danger to her life onto the back burner. Quite suddenly, as if everything had shifted into sharp focus, Maddie was very much aware of her surroundings. Brownstones lined up like so many soldiers on either side of the street. In spite of the early hour, a few people were out and about. They passed a man in work clothes fiddling with an awning. A young woman in shorts and flip-flops was walking her dog. A taxi pulled up about three buildings down, and a woman in a business suit hurried down the steps. Jase’s hand tightened on her arm, and she was very much aware that his other hand had slipped beneath his jacket to his gun.
Even as her throat went dry, the cab pulled away. Jase picked up the pace and drew her into a narrow alleyway. “We’re going in the back way to the store.”
“Why are we here so early?”
“I want to make sure no one is lying in wait for you. This is the one place that they can depend on you showing up to today.”
Maddie glanced sideways at him. His mouth was set in a grim line, and she could see that his attention was focused on their surroundings. She forced herself to look where he was looking, but she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The alley appeared to be deserted.
“I also want to tour the place without being interrupted. I can’t rid myself of the idea that I saw something similar to that Golden Spider logo yesterday.”
When they reached the back entrance to the store, Jase positioned her between himself and the wall of the building while he dealt with the security code and opened the door.
“Can you get in any place this easily?” Maddie asked.
“It helps that I installed the system and the codes.” His voice was pitched low. “I’ll go in first. No noise. No conversation. You stay behind me until I make sure that each area is clear.”
“You really think someone is in there waiting for us?” she whispered.
The eyes that
met hers were cool. “I’m playing it safe. I didn’t play it safe enough yesterday when I took you to the park. I changed the security codes for Eva the day after the robbery, but Arnold Bartlett has the new code, and I imagine Jordan has it. There’s no way to be sure that Eva didn’t give it out to someone else.”
Maddie swallowed hard and they slipped into a room that appeared to function both as storage and a break room. Jase led the way into the main salon. The faint scents of coffee and lilies lingered in the air. Lit only by the early-morning sun, the room lacked the glitter and fantasy that she’d experienced the day before, but for Maddie, it still had a quiet elegance.
She followed Jase past the elevator to the stairwell and together they climbed to the second floor and exited into the office area. It was empty. Maddie kept half a step behind Jase as he moved silently from office to office, scanning each one. Satisfied that they were deserted, he moved down the short hall to the door of the workroom. Then he stopped and listened. Maddie counted ten beats before she heard it—a faint tapping. Even muffled, she recognized it as the sound of a hammer striking against metal and it was coming from inside the workroom.
Jase motioned her to stay where she was, then took out his gun and stepped forward to open the door.
“Cho?” he said.
Startled, the man whirled in his chair. The small hammer clattered to the floor when his eyes fastened on Jase’s gun.
IT WAS shock and fear that Jase recognized on Cho’s face. Gut instinct told him that Maddie had been right about him. Whatever was going on, Cho wasn’t behind it. The moment he lowered his gun, Maddie rushed past him.
“Cho, what are you doing here?” she asked.
Cho rose from his chair. “I often come in early to catch up on work. I got behind yesterday because of the cameraman.”
Maddie motioned him into his chair and then sat in her mother’s. Perfectly willing to let her play good cop again, Jase left the door behind him open and moved to a far corner between two windows. From his position, he could keep his eye on both Madison Avenue and 51st Street and still be ready for anyone who tried to enter the workroom.
He’d learned a long time ago to trust his instincts and they were still telling him that something was going to go down today.
“You haven’t spoken to the police then?” Maddie asked.
“Police?” Cho’s gaze shifted to Jase, then back to Maddie. “Why would I speak with the police?”
Maddie quickly filled him in on what had happened at her mother’s apartment and later at the police station. While she did, Jase scanned the room, searching for what had been tugging at the corners of his mind ever since he’d come across that ad for the Golden Spider and seen Eva’s doodle in the margin of her calendar. Maddie had been right, it wasn’t among her mother’s sketches.
After glancing down on both streets, he moved to Adam’s desk. He’d done the same thing yesterday, then turned and leaned his hip against the corner so that he could talk to Adam and still keep his eyes on Maddie and Cho. He repeated the movement and was midpoint in turning when he caught it out of the corner of his eye. On the shelf above Adam’s desk was a framed photo of the Golden Spider logo.
A tingle of excitement moved through him as he moved back to the corner between the windows and refocused his attention on Maddie and Cho. Instead of growing agitated about his granddaughter’s troubles, Cho appeared to have become more relaxed as Maddie finished.
“The police know she’s your granddaughter, and it’s the timing that looks so bad,” she explained. “The money went into her account three days after the robbery, and she won’t tell the police where it came from or what she needed it for.”
“I gave her the money,” said Cho. “Michelle is very proud. She was embarrassed to have to ask me for help.”
“Where did you get the money?” Jase asked.
Cho’s chin lifted slightly as he shifted his gaze to Jase. “Eva lent it to me.”
“Eva lent you the money?” Maddie asked.
Cho nodded. “Michelle needed it right away, and it would have taken time for me to get that amount out of my retirement fund. I would have had to sell some stocks at a loss. When Eva died, I told Jordan everything. You’ll get the money back.”
They hadn’t had a chance to tell Jordan about the money in Michelle’s account, Jase thought. But the fact that Cho had told her would give his story more credibility.
“Why did Michelle need the money so quickly?” Maddie asked.
Cho shook his head. “As I mentioned before, she’s a very proud girl. That was the reason she didn’t want anyone to know that we were related. She was determined to get this job on her own. She was still living in a dorm when she interned here. But as soon as she was hired full time, she decided she needed to find her own place to live. And since she was working here and was being paid well, she decided to buy a place. She needed thirty thousand dollars for a down payment. Instead of coming to me for help or advice, she borrowed the money.”
“Not from a bank,” Jase said.
“She tried and was turned down. Then a friend told her about a place where they were more understanding about young people starting out on good career paths.” Cho raised an eyebrow. “I believe they call them loan sharks in this country. She says she read the paperwork and that she was given an amount to pay monthly. Which she did. Then a month ago, she was told that she wasn’t even covering the interest on the loan and that her current balance was a hundred thousand dollars. Michelle’s a proud girl, but she’s not stupid. She knew that she was in trouble. That’s when she came to me for help.”
Maddie studied him for a moment. “Did Michelle know that you borrowed the money from Eva?”
“No. Eva withdrew the money from her account on the day we talked and she gave me a bank check. There’s no way that Michelle could have known. It would have shamed her even more to know that Eva was involved.”
Maddie glanced over her shoulder at Jase and then back at Cho. “I think that the reason she won’t talk to the police is because she wants to protect you.”
“From what?” Cho asked.
“It’s the timing again. I’ll bet she thinks you robbed the store and that’s how you got the money.”
Cho thought for a minute. “Perhaps.”
“You’ll have to go down to the police station and explain everything,” Jase said. A flash of movement on Madison Avenue caught his attention—two men getting out of a taxi. He recognized his operatives, Tony and Carter. If they were arriving, Adam Ware wouldn’t be far behind.
When he turned back, Cho was clearing his desk. On a hunch, he took the photograph from Adam’s desk and showed it to Cho. “Do you know anything about this photo?”
“Yes. That’s a design Adam created for a nightclub. It’s also the place where Michelle went to pay back her loan. I insisted on going with her to deliver the hundred thousand.”
THE WINDOW in the hallway outside the workroom led to a fire escape and offered a view of the alleyway. Through it Jase watched Cho exit through the back door and head towards 51st Street. He’d already phoned Stanton to let him know that the man was on his way, and he’d given him a brief summary of Cho’s story.
In return, Stanton had explained what he’d learned about the Golden Spider club and its owner from his friend in Vice. Then Jase had checked with Tony and Carter, who were still hanging out at the front of the store, and confirmed that Adam was due to arrive any minute.
He relayed that information to Maddie and added, “Tony and Carter are here on the pretext of getting some shots of Adam in the workroom before the store officially opens. It’s as good a time as any for us to discover if your cousin has the new security code. Or if he’s going to have to cool his heels until Arnold Bartlett arrives and opens for business.”
The moment Cho disappeared from view, Maddie turned to study Jase. “There’s something in your eyes—a sort of excitement. Have you fitted the puzzle together yet?”
�
�No. But I’m closer than before.”
“Because Adam designed that logo for the Golden Spider?”
“Yes. It proves he had a connection with the club’s owner, John Kessler, and/or that club. Stanton says that Kessler has been under investigation for some time. The problem is that they can’t get any hard evidence on him. Socially and politically, he’s very well-connected here in the city. The Golden Spider is the place to be seen in New York right now. All the big movers and shakers hang out there. But the man is suspected of using the club as a front for a very sophisticated loan-sharking business. Kessler finds his client base there. So far he’s kept his distance from the shadier side of the business. The two victims who have gone to the police have gone missing. But those two clients seem to have been selected very carefully. They were young, they worked in the city at upwardly mobile jobs and they had access to money.”
“Michelle didn’t.”
“She worked here. We know that it wouldn’t have been hard for her to get her hands on one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of jewels. That’s eventually what she might have been pressured to do. They may even have thought that’s what she’d done when she was able to produce the money. And if encouraging their young clients to steal money from their workplaces is their modus operandi, that may be why the police haven’t been able to get any hard evidence. The victims aren’t going to admit to being thieves.”
“Michelle can give them hard evidence. She didn’t steal anything.”
“True.” Jase watched a cab pull up at the mouth of the alleyway on 50th Street. “Stanton will encourage her to do just that if Cho’s story checks out. In the meantime, Stanton is going to put both Michelle and Cho in protective custody for now.”
“And what about Adam? He has a connection to the Golden Spider club too. The thing is why would he need to steal jewels or borrow money from a loan shark? Jordan told me he has a trust fund, and his father runs a bank.”
“Good question. But he fits the profile of the victims Kessler targets,” Jase pointed out. “Everything we just said about Michelle is true about Adam in spades. He might even be the “friend” who told her about Kessler’s operation. Plus, for the last two years he’s seen Jordan as a threat to his future here at Eva Ware Designs. With Eva gone, he probably assumed he’d step into her shoes. Then he learns that you’re a designer also. Last but not least, with you or Jordan out of the way, Adam stands to inherit a lot more money because of the terms of your mother’s will. He’s under pressure from his mother, he has a temper and a rebellious streak. You can bet that Stanton will question him very closely about his connection to Kessler.”
