by JANIE CROUGH
“No problem,” Seth said. “You stay here and look through the pictures a little more. Conner will stay, too. I’ll get coffee and be back soon. Anything in particular in it?”
“No, just black, thanks.”
Seth stood. “I’ll run down to the coffee shop in the lobby and get it. If you drink what’s in our office, you’re liable to have to be chained up in the next full moon.”
Conner looked over at Seth. “If you’re going down there, I’ll have the usual.”
Seth rolled his eyes and snickered, walking out the door without responding.
“What’s ‘the usual’?” Adrienne asked Conner, her curiosity piqued by Seth’s response. In the long silence that followed, Adrienne wasn’t sure he was going to tell her.
“Skinny vanilla chai tea latte with no foam and sugar-free vanilla,” Conner finally said. “I get ragged pretty hard from the guys.”
Adrienne couldn’t help it; she broke out into a smile. The thought of this big tough-looking agent whose shirt seemed to be perpetually slightly wrinkled and whose tie was probably one of a dozen stuffed in his glove compartment, using the words skinny and latte when referring to his coffee was downright hilarious.
Conner smiled back, looking sheepish. “I know. It doesn’t exactly fit the tough-guy image.”
The way he cocked his head to the side caused his black hair to fall onto his forehead. Before she could stop herself, Adrienne’s fingers reached up to tuck the hair into place. Halfway to his head she realized what she was about to do and immediately lowered her hand back to the table. She studied the photos again intently, hoping he hadn’t noticed her...
Her what? Desire to touch him? Inexplicable need to be closer to him? Complete lack of control of her own hands?
Adrienne stared down at the pictures for a long time without looking up, grateful for the distraction, although she still wasn’t getting any helpful info from them.
“Are you sure these are all the work of the same killer?” she finally asked.
“Yes.” There was no doubt in Conner’s voice. “He has a signature that makes it clear they are all the same killer.” He didn’t offer any information about what that signature was. Adrienne didn’t ask, knowing he wouldn’t tell her anyway.
Adrienne was tired of looking at these poor dead women. It was so frustrating to review them without any understanding as to what and how it had happened. She pushed the pictures back toward Conner’s side of the table.
“I need a break. I can’t look at them anymore right now.”
She gazed at Conner, expecting to find more of yesterday’s hostile and condescending tone from him. Instead, he looked attentive, even the slightest bit sympathetic.
“You know, it’s okay,” Conner said gently. “Whatever’s going on here, whatever reason you’re not able to help us, it really is okay.”
Adrienne couldn’t help but respond to his gentleness. “This has never happened to me. The...nothing. I’ve always been able to hear or see or feel something before.”
“It’s been a long time since you’ve done anything like this, right? Maybe you just need to ease yourself back into it, like you said.” The gentleness was still there but Adrienne could hear the disbelief that colored his tone.
“You don’t understand. I always hear something when I’m around people, no matter what. It’s like a buzz. But right now I don’t hear anything.”
“Maybe it’s the pressure of the situation. Or maybe the pictures are too old or something.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Look, Adrienne. I want to give you this chance, while we’re here alone, to tell me if there’s something you want to tell me. You know, about your abilities or about when you worked for the FBI before.”
“I don’t understand.” Adrienne was honestly puzzled.
“I mean, if you were in some way exaggerating what you could do—in terms of profiling and working for the FBI—either then or now. Or, hell, even if you had completely tricked the Bureau before, you can tell me, and I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”
“What?”
“I’m just telling you, I’ll protect you from any repercussions. We’ll come up with some reason why you can’t help us that everyone will buy. I’ll even make sure Rick Vincent is taken care of and won’t be arrested.”
He had the nerve to sit there with his gorgeous green eyes and say this to her.
Adrienne struggled to keep her temper from boiling over. “So let me make sure I understand this. You think I deceived the FBI ten years ago when I worked for them and that I’m back again, lying now. Wasting my time and yours.”
She could see Conner attempting damage control in his mind. But she never gave him a chance to speak.
“And you, very magnanimously I might add, are offering to protect me if I just come clean now and, what, admit this was all a hoax?”
“Adrienne, calm down.”
Adrienne raised her eyebrows at that—no man should ever tell an upset woman to calm down—but she kept quiet.
“I’m just trying to offer you an out if you need it.”
“Well, thank you, Agent Perigo.” She saw him grimace. “But despite you thinking I’m a liar and a cheat, not to mention some sort of juvenile attention-seeker, I don’t need an out!”
“Listen, I’m not trying to offend you. But I’ve been an agent a long time, and I’ve never seen anything that suggested a gift such as yours is real. As a matter of fact, the exact opposite is true. When someone comes forth and claims to be ‘psychic’ and know something about a case, almost always he or she is involved in some way.”
Adrienne took a deep breath. Conner was skeptical. She had dealt with skepticism before, even considered it healthy. No one should blindly believe someone else without reason. Why did she feel the need to prove herself to him when she never had felt that way about anyone else?
“I’m not a psychic,” Adrienne said quietly.
“Whatever you want to call it. Good, smart detective work is what solves cases, not hocus-pocus.”
“It’s not magic, Perigo. It’s just the way my brain works. Some people are geniuses with musical instruments. Some are whizzes when it comes to math. My brain is just wired differently than most people.”
“Then why isn’t your gift working now?”
Temper threatened again. “I don’t know!”
Seth chose that moment to come in with the coffee. He put the cup carrier down, looking back and forth between Adrienne and Conner, noticing the obvious tension between them.
“Here you go, Adrienne. Coffee, black. And here’s your froufrou, princess,” he said as he handed Conner his drink. “You owe me $4.50.”
“How come I have to pay, but she doesn’t?”
“Because her drink didn’t involve an embarrassing list of words to order.” Seth sat down in his chair. “Anything come to you while I was gone?”
“Nothing, Seth, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve got time.”
Adrienne hoped time would help.
Chapter Five
Six hours later Adrienne still had not experienced anything helpful to the case. Conner and Seth had left her alone in the interrogation room but stood just a few feet away on the other side of two-way glass. They could see Adrienne, but she couldn’t see them.
All day Conner had watched Adrienne pore over the pictures again and again. He had watched her try different methods, studying each picture one at time, spreading as many out on the table as could fit, flipping through them all quickly. Everything she tried ended with that same blended look of frustration and confusion.
He had to give it to her; if she was pulling some sort of scam, she was definitely tenacious about it.
They hadn’t talked again about his get
-out-of-jail-free offer. She seemed legitimately offended by it, so he didn’t bring it back up. Conner shrugged. He was just trying to provide her an escape if she needed it—not all those things she had accused him of doing.
He and Seth had tried to help her any way they could. They encouraged her to take breaks, walked her outside to get fresh air and took her on a lengthy lunch to get her away from all of it for a while. Nothing seemed to help. Now, watching her, she just looked exhausted.
Conner would be angry at Adrienne, but Adrienne was so frustrated with herself that he couldn’t bring himself to be mad. But he was definitely concerned that they had wasted an entire day doing something that had provided zero results. Conner had stayed with her the whole day—he could admit it was at least partially because he didn’t trust her out of his sight—and watched her get more frustrated and disheartened as the day went along.
“I guess this is a bust, huh?” Seth broke into Conner’s thoughts as they both watched Adrienne. “Looks like you were right.”
“About what?” Conner asked, breaking his gaze from Adrienne to look at his partner.
“That this was all bogus and a waste of time. She’s done nothing to help us.”
“Yeah, I guess, but you definitely can’t say she didn’t try. I almost want her to get a feeling or reading or whatever, just so she won’t have that look on her face anymore.”
“Yeah, she looks pretty upset. I told Chief Kelly that we weren’t having much luck with her. He wanted to know if we thought she was withholding information on purpose.”
Conner shook his head. “I don’t think so. If she is, she’s one hell of an actress. What do you think?”
Seth gazed through the two-way glass again. “Who knows? But it doesn’t seem like she found something and isn’t telling. The chief wanted to know if we wanted him to come in and talk to her since she had worked with him before. I told him no. That okay?”
“Yeah. The way she spoke about Chief Kelly before, I don’t think seeing him would help any. What are we supposed to do? Call her a failure and send her home?” Conner asked.
“The chief wants us to consider letting her see the packages Simon Says sent. The hair locks.”
Conner’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m not ready to do that yet. I don’t want to give away anything that detailed about the case.”
“I told the chief that. Bureau’s going to pay to put her up in a hotel room at least for tonight. See where we are by the end of tomorrow. Maybe she just needs a good night’s sleep.”
“All right. But look at her, she’s exhausted. How about I’ll drive with her in her car to the hotel, and you follow and give me a ride back.”
Seth nodded and headed out of the door. “Sure. Let me shut down my computer, and I’ll be ready to go. I’ll meet you at her hotel.”
Conner walked over to the interrogation room. Adrienne was still poring over the pictures. She didn’t even look up when he entered.
“Hey, you about ready to call it a day?” Conner asked as he sat down across from her.
“Conner, I still don’t have anything. Nothing. These women...they died so horribly, and I can’t seem to help them in any way.”
“Well, if it helps, Seth and I have been feeling that exact same frustration for weeks.”
Adrienne shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“You just do the best you can with what you have.”
“Well, right now, it looks like I have absolutely nothing.”
Conner reached over and took the pictures from her. “That’s enough for the day. You need a break. We’re going to put you up at a hotel, and we’ll start fresh in the morning after a good night’s sleep.”
As Conner put each of the pictures back in their respective envelopes, he watched Adrienne put her elbows on the table and rest her head in her hands. She looked fragile, breakable. Conner was overwhelmed by the urge to protect her.
And kiss her.
Of course that still didn’t mean he trusted her or believed what she said she could do.
When he finished putting away the photos, Adrienne stood with him. He held the door open for her as they walked into the hallway. His other hand hovered near the small of her back.
“I’m going to drive you in your car to the hotel. Seth will pick me up and bring me back here.”
“I’m okay to drive,” Adrienne insisted, stopping.
“I know you’d probably be fine, but San Fran streets can be crazy even for those of us who drive them every day. Just let me do this for you, okay?”
She looked at him for a long moment.
“What?” Conner finally asked.
“You’re kind of being nice to me. Not sure what to do with that.”
Conner wanted to reach out and stroke her cheek but, instead, squeezed her shoulder in a friendly manner. “Well, how about I’ll go back to being mean to you tomorrow? After we both get some sleep.”
Her smiled transfixed her whole face—an impish grin that suited her features perfectly. It took Conner’s breath away. And definitely brought back the urge to kiss her.
She stuck out her hand, and they shook on it. “Okay, a truce, then. At least for today.”
Conner tried to find a neutral topic as they headed to her car in the parking garage. “Neutral” wasn’t exactly simple for them, considering they couldn’t talk about his work or her work or his background or her background or the city, or most other topics lest it bring them back to why they were here.
“We’ve had some really great weather here lately,” Conner finally said.
Adrienne looked at him as if he were crazy. It was San Francisco. The weather here rarely strayed from the averages.
Conner shrugged and grinned. “Just trying to make conversation that doesn’t break the truce.”
“You don’t have to pander to me, Perigo. I don’t mind you being skeptical about what I can do. It’s your petty comments I can live without.”
All five foot four of her was glaring up at him. He swallowed the laughter he knew would just get him in more trouble.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How long have you worked for the Bureau?” Adrienne asked as they entered the garage. Adrienne directed them to her car, and Conner opened her door for her.
“Twelve years. I was at Quantico for about four years, as part of CIRG—Critical Incident Response Group. I liked that and kind of naturally morphed into ViCAP.”
Adrienne rolled her eyes. “The FBI loves its acronyms. So how did you end up out here from Virginia?”
“Natural progression, mostly. My family is all on the West Coast. My grandmother lived here in San Francisco, and I stayed with her for a while when a ViCAP position opened. Worked out for everyone.”
As they drove, Conner answered Adrienne’s questions about his time at the FBI. He had arrived at the San Francisco office not long after she had left eight years ago but had always been in a different section of the Bureau office. If she had stayed just a year longer, they might have crossed paths.
Conner parked the car at the hotel and got Adrienne’s bag out of the trunk and walked her into the lobby, allowing her to get checked in.
She turned and offered her hand for him to shake and to take her bag. “Thanks for getting me here, Conner. I guess we’ll just pick up tomorrow?”
Conner found he wasn’t ready to let her go just yet. He took her outstretched hand, but turned it in his palm. “I’ll walk you to your room. That okay?”
Adrienne gave him a shy smile and pulled her hand away. “Sure. Thanks.”
They strolled to the elevator and went up to her floor. At her room’s door she slid by him and opened it with her key card.
They walked in, and Conner placed her bag on the bed. Out of habit he checked the closet and bathro
om to make sure both were empty. When he came back into the room, Adrienne stood looking at him with an eyebrow raised. “Everything clear?”
“Sorry—habit. Look, before I go, let me give you my number, just in case you need anything.”
Adrienne tried to find a pen and paper so he could write it down but didn’t see any. She tossed him her phone. “Just program it straight in.”
Conner punched in his number and handed it back to her. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll come by and get you around nine o’clock?”
“Sure.”
Conner watched as a pinched look came over her face, and Adrienne’s gaze dropped to the ground. “Listen, I just want to say I’m sorry I was so useless today. I’m sure tomorrow will be better. It has to be.”
Conner put a finger under her chin, tilting her head up. “Hey, you tried your best. That’s all anybody could ask.”
“Yeah? Well, my best didn’t accomplish squat today.” Frustration fairly oozed out of her.
“I’ve certainly had those types of days myself. You just have to recalibrate yourself for tomorrow.”
Adrienne nodded. That she seemed to understand. “Thanks, Conner.” She smiled softly.
That soft smile was his undoing. Almost without meaning to, he bent down and kissed her. He meant the kiss to be brief, comforting. Conner was surprised when Adrienne, in turn, deepened the kiss. He felt her hands grab the lapel of his jacket and pull him closer, and she stood up on tiptoe.
Conner’s armed snaked around her waist as her mouth opened and her tongue ran along his lips. He was pulling her even closer when a brisk knock came from the door that wasn’t completely closed. They shot apart as Seth walked in.
“Hey, Conner, you ready?” Seth looked from Adrienne to Conner and recognition flared in his eyes. “Oh, sorry. I’m leaving now.”
“No, hang on, Seth. I’m coming.” Conner looked at Adrienne, who seemed as shaken up as he felt. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay? We’ll start completely over with everything.”
Adrienne smiled. “Fresh start sounds good. With everything.”
