by Mallory Kane
She didn’t think she’d ever felt so helpless and vulnerable in her life. All the careful control she’d spent her life building up around herself had been taken away over the past twenty-four hours—ever since Annie’s call.
She wasn’t aware of how close Dev was until his fingers wrapped gently around the nape of her neck. He leaned down and put his mouth near her ear. His breath fanned her hair and warmed her cheek. “Get into the car, or I’ll pick you up and throw you in.”
His icy calm, his ludicrous threat, but most of all, the reassuring squeeze of his fingers on her nape, finally got her to move. She walked over to his car, expecting him to follow and open the door for her, but someone called his name. He headed toward the person. With a sigh, she tried the stubborn door, but it wouldn’t budge.
So she waited, leaning against the fender with her arms wrapped around herself. She watched the people in dark jackets or uniforms, unable to tell what any of them were doing.
After what seemed like an hour, Dev walked over to her. She could feel the coiled intensity emanating from him like heat. “You don’t mind so good, do you?” he muttered.
“Tell that to your stupid door,” she grumbled, absurdly grateful for his dry comment and his comforting presence. It helped to diffuse the paralyzing terror still knotting her stomach. Still, she couldn’t shake the menacing tone of the red, dripping words. …or regret it.
“So,” Dev asked conversationally, “who would resort to threatening you with graffiti?” His voice held a note of restrained humor, but his gaze never left the officers who were processing the scene. He leaned his butt next to hers on the fender so his arm rested against hers, the gesture softening his words. “Whose life have you ruined lately?”
She clamped her teeth. “Besides yours, you mean?”
She heard something, which, coming from someone else, might have sounded like a chuckle. “Yeah, Connor. I think we can eliminate me as a suspect, since I’ve been with you all evening.”
She looked at her porch, where two crime scene techs were examining the floor with flashlights and carefully placing numbered markers around. “I might have done a show or two recently that upset some people.”
“Ya think?” He let the silence stretch until she wanted to yell at him. Finally he spoke. “Like that city councilman who walked off your show ?”
That surprised her. “I thought you didn’t watch my show.”
“I don’t. I’m a detective. I have people watch for me and report back.”
She frowned at him. Was he joking? He assessed her right back with those dark, inscrutable eyes. And just like that, the coiled intensity between them roared back to life. And so did the heat and yearning inside her. Damn. The place where her arm touched his suddenly sensitized into a brand new erogenous zone. The silk-over-steel heat of his bicep struck lightning bolts of longing to her core and brought a flush of warmth to her face and neck.
In an effort to distract herself, she turned to study the garish letters emblazoned across the front of her house. “Leave him alone,” she whispered. Then louder, “What do you think that means?”
“Somebody wants you to stop probing into someone’s life?”
“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “I’ve gotten notes like that, but they’re typed or block-printed or a mumbled voice mail. Thought out ahead of time. This—” She paused, trying to work out the specifics of something that had dawned on her just seconds before.
“This was planned, kind of,” she went on. “I mean, whoever did it brought the paint with them. But there’s something…off about it.”
She caught the assessing glance Dev sent her way before he also turned his attention to the slashes of paint on the wall.
“You mean like they planned to do it, but hadn’t decided what they were going to write?” he asked.
“Yes. That’s it.” She laid a hand on his forearm. “It’s half-logical and half-crazy.”
“Like Fontenot.”
Fear arrowed through her at his words, although she’d been speeding toward the same conclusion. “Yeah. Like Fontenot. Do you think the person who’s doing the killing for him wrote this? Is someone telling me to leave Fontenot alone?”
Dev shot her a razor-sharp look. But before he could say anything, bright headlights turned onto her street. A news van. She groaned, then saw another van and a car appear. After they parked and their doors opened, people started pouring out like clowns at a circus.
Reporters and cameramen. Fabulous.
A good-looking man with thinning red hair walked up to Dev and showed him a badge. They shook hands. Then the man pointed back toward the house, and he and Dev walked off in that direction.
Reghan watched Dev disappear, feeling alone and exposed as the crowd of newspeople surrounded her like piranhas. The shoe was on the other foot, and she did not like it.
…
Two hours later at the Garden District station, the lieutenant whose thinning hair and reading glasses didn’t hurt his good looks at all, leaned back in his chair and regarded Reghan. “Explain to me one more time why you thought someone had been in your house earlier?”
Reghan wanted to throw the nasty mug of poison he’d claimed was coffee in his face, but she didn’t have the energy. “For the twelfth time, Lieutenant Flanagan, I wanted to show Detective Gautier a certain DVD,” she said slowly and distinctly, as if to a child. “But when I turned on the DVD player, the disk in it was not the right one.”
“And this was in your house?”
She was long past irritated and well into angry, but she knew that his goal was to make her mad and therefore careless. So she held onto the last dregs of her control to keep her voice even. “Yes. Detective Gautier kindly came to my house to get the disk. He was there when I realized someone had been inside my home and removed the DVD. I searched my house, but the disk I’d wanted Detective Gautier to see was gone. I had watched it earlier, just before leaving, so I know it was in the recorder.”
“And nobody had been in your house while you were gone?”
She stared at him. “Obviously someone had. The thief.”
Lieutenant Flanagan took off his reading glasses and rubbed them across the front of his shirt, unaffected by her sarcasm.
“Do we really have to do this?” she said tiredly. “Detective Gautier called it in. Your officers came out and took fingerprints.”
“Right. Right.” He picked up a stubby pencil and made a note, just as he had the last three times she’d mentioned that. “They didn’t find anything.”
“So you say,” she responded. “They certainly did a thorough job and used plenty of fingerprinting dust—” she held up her hands, which still held a trace of black on the fingertips “—and ink.”
He shoved his glasses back on, not even bothering to push them up his nose, and used his palms to smooth his hair back from his temples. “I’ve got to tell you, Ms. Connor. It looks to me as if somebody didn’t like what you said about a friend of theirs.”
“Excellent detective work, since the person wrote ‘leave him alone or regret it.’” She bit her lip, but the words were already out. Though she wasn’t sure she really even cared at his point. She was frustrated, tired, scared, and sick of his thinly disguised contempt.
His brows dipped, and he put his palms on the desktop preparing to rise.
“I apologize,” she said quickly. “I’m really tired. And I’m sorry if you don’t care for my show, Lieutenant, but I only report the truth. It’s the public’s right to know. And I stick to important issues.”
“Mm-hmm. Important issues. And who did you say is your guest tomorrow?”
Reghan seethed. “Miss Louisiana World,” she said through her teeth. “Good for you, you made your point. Now—”
“Okay, okay.” He pushed away from the desk and leaned back in his chair. “I’ve talked to your boss and requested transcripts of your shows from the past two weeks. I’m going to need you to come back here in the morning to go over t
hem with one of my officers. But I’ve got to tell you, Ms. Connor, I think you simply pissed somebody off and that’s all there is to this.”
She felt her face flame with anger. That did it. He’d crossed the line. “I simply pissed somebody off? Is that the official police stance? I pissed somebody off, so I should expect this sort of vandalism?” She stood, her back ramrod straight and her chin up. “I certainly want to thank you so very much for your help, Lieutenant,” she said icily.
He didn’t get up. He merely sent her a measuring look.
She gritted her teeth. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to ask your officers not to discuss this with the press?”
Flanagan grinned and glanced toward the open door of his office. “You should know the answer to that one.”
Reghan heard the undisguised irony in the lieutenant’s voice. Even before she looked over her shoulder to follow his gaze, she knew what she would see. Several reporters waited in the lobby, rubbernecking at the lieutenant’s office. “Right.”
There was no doubt that her name and the pictures of her vandalized house would be all over the local papers and TV news shows by the next morning. “It’s been a pleasure, Lieutenant. I feel much safer now.” Straightening her shoulders, she exited through the door into the gaggle of reporters.
“Reghan, can you tell us—”
“Ms. Connor, could we get a statement—”
“Reghan—”
“Who do you think wrote—”
She halted and stood stiffly, feeling her body sway as microphones were thrust in her face and flashes popped in front of her eyes. Just when she thought she might pass out, a warm, strong arm came around her shoulders.
Dev. His eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks were hollow with fatigue, but he pulled her close and brushed past the reporters as if they were low-hanging branches in his way.
“What are you doing here?” she asked hoarsely. “This isn’t your district.”
“I wanted a look at the photos of the words in close-up. “ He said with a shrug.
She knew that wasn’t the only reason. “You didn’t have to wait for me,” she said, but was absurdly pleased and grateful he had. He gave her shoulder a squeeze, then let go and pressed his palm into the small of her back and steered her toward his wreck of a car. Grateful for his guiding hand but chilled by the absence of his embrace, she wrapped her arms around herself.
Once they were in his car and on the road, she sent a sidelong glance his way. “Why did you wait?” she asked.
“I know it’s not easy, being alone and scared. And the press is going to be all over your house. I thought you might want to stay at the center tonight. There’s always an extra bed or couch.”
She blinked. He was being way too nice. Not his usual attitude toward her. She probably ought to be suspicious. But right now she didn’t have the strength to question his motives. She was feeling exactly what he’d said—alone and scared. And the amount of comfort she was drawing from his unexpectedly kind gesture was overwhelming. Her eyes stung with gratitude.
But she couldn’t accept. She had to hold onto what little control she had left.
She shook her head. “No. I’ll be just fine at h—” The word home stuck in her throat. All she could see when she closed her eyes was the blood-colored message scrawled on her porch wall. She regrouped. “I’ll be fine at home. Lieutenant Flanagan said he’d have a car drive by. He told me to go in the back door and avoid the front porch.”
They rode in silence for a few moments.
“What time is it?” she asked.
He glanced at his watch. “Late.”
She yawned. “After midnight?”
“Three a.m.”
She groaned. “I’ve been up for almost twenty-four hours.” Exhaustion settled over her like too many blankets. She wasn’t sure she could move. “I guess you have, too.”
He made a noncommittal sound.
She could barely keep her eyes open, so she let them drift shut. “I have to be back in Lieutenant Flanagan’s office in the morning, which means I’m going to miss my show. I’m supposed to interview—” Suddenly her mind was a blank. “Somebody,” she finished lamely.
“WACT can get along without you for one day. Look at the bright side. You’ll have one less person wanting to get back at you.”
That drew her up short. Her eyes shot open. “You think that’s funny?”
What had possessed her to think he was actually warming up to her? He’d obviously been setting her up, acting protective while he was waiting for a chance to pounce. Acting like a good guy didn’t mean that he was one.
And just because she’d let down her guard for a brief moment didn’t mean she was weak.
Her earlier doubts about him evaporated. “I don’t go after anyone unless and until I have all the facts. If the people I expose want someone to blame, they should look in the mirror. I just present the truth,” she declared.
Dev angled a glance at her. “Just the truth? Are you really that naïve, Connor? The truth can have more than one side. The truth can hurt, can ruin a person’s life. It may not be much of a life by your standards, but it’s their life.”
It didn’t take a genius to know whom he was talking about.
Stunned and chagrined, she turned her head to stare out the window. The darkened streets flew by, but she didn’t see them. Her mind was filled with the image of Dev’s face etched with shock and pain as she’d confronted him with his lies. Then the picture changed to the apoplectic purple rage darkening the face of the city councilman when she’d questioned him about the accusations of sexual harassment.
She wanted to defend herself, to explain to Dev how carefully she checked all the facts before she confronted someone on her show. Weren’t the truth and the facts the same thing? And wasn’t her job to bring both to light, to public awareness?
But he’d said the truth ruins people’s lives.
And hadn’t she missed a small, but important, fact about him, a small voice in her head pointed out…
She rubbed her temple tiredly, attempting to banish it. She was too tired to deal with this tonight. She was getting all mixed up.
As Dev turned onto her block, she saw that the police had left her front light on. Yellow crime scene tape crisscrossed the columns of her porch, and the paint still glistened like spilled blood. When he pulled to a stop, a couple of photographers materialized out of the shadows. Dev got out and walked toward them without opening her door.
She couldn’t hear what he said, but she saw the menacing squaring of his shoulders and heard the cold assurance in his voice. The photographers scattered.
Reghan tried to wrestle open the passenger door, but once again it was futile. When Dev jerked it open and she got out, she said, “Thank you, Detective.”
He slammed the door and just stood there beside her. She started to walk toward the porch. He matched her, step for step.
She stopped, too exhausted to argue. “Look, I don’t—”
“Shh.” He pressed his fingers against her lips, shocking her into silence.
His fingertips were warm and vibrant and it was all she could do to keep from opening her mouth and touching them with her tongue. Tonight he would taste like warmth and safety, and oh, she was hungry for that.
“Just walking you to your door,” he said.
“That’s not nec—”
“Ah-ah-ah,” he said, shaking his head. His fingertips lingered on her mouth for another second. “Don’t worry. I’m not doing it to be chivalrous,” he said with a quirk of his lips. “I just want to make sure you don’t mess up the crime scene.”
Naturally, the crime scene was what he was worried about. Whatever. She didn’t really care why he was there, she appreciated it anyway.
He led her up her front steps, his hand at her back.
“Shouldn’t we go around back?” she asked. “We’re not supposed to disturb the crime scene.”
“You’re not supposed to
disturb the crime scene. Me, I’m the police,” he said with a crooked smile as he held up the crime scene tape so she could slip beneath it. “Watch your step,” he added, steering her around the red blotches and splatters. She clutched his sleeve, trying her best to ignore the looming red letters.
At the door he looked down at her and held out his hand. “Keys?”
“Right. Keys.” She gave a hollow laugh. “Sorry. It’s just so bizarre. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”
Dev unlocked the door and went in ahead of her, turning on lights and scanning everything efficiently. “Surprising.”
She whirled, her pulse jumping. “What?” A quick look told her nothing in the room was out of place, other than an abundance of black fingerprint powder blotches on the shiny surfaces. She pressed a hand against her chest.
Dev held up a hand. “Sorry. I meant surprising that no one has ever threatened you before.”
Anger flared inside her, but it was halfhearted. “Will you give it a rest?” she said tiredly. “I don’t do anything differently than any other news show.”
“Yeah, you do.” His voice was quiet but hard.
“Oh, really?” She propped her fists on her hips. “Please, do tell.”
His ebony eyes bored into her for a second, then he turned his attention to the windows. “You make it personal.”
Did she? “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He looked back. “You go after people like they’ve personally betrayed you.”
She felt her face heat up. “I do not.”
“Yeah, cher, you do. You’re a one-woman crusade to prove that everybody has feet of clay.”
“No, I’m not. But if someone in a position of power is shady, I do think that the public ought to know the truth.”
“There’s truth and there’s truth. Some truths are no one’s business and should stay private.”
“I disagree.”
He gave her a quizzical smile. “So tell me, what about tonight? How did it feel to be the target of all those talking heads? You didn’t object when I whisked you out of there. Why didn’t you go talk to them? Give them the truth?”
