by Julie Miller
Her flashlight showed a clear pathway across the floor to the opposite stairs. She’d cross the basement by herself first, and then hurry upstairs and come back with a hearing teacher if she couldn’t locate the child.
The shadows gathered around her feet as she checked the two shelter areas that had once been locker rooms. Her imagination conjured scrapes of sound and whispers of stale breezes. A chill wrapped its icy fingers around her ankles and crept up her legs.
Run! her phobia shouted, trying to tell her that fleeing this dank, horrible pit was the only antidote that could warm her, sustain her. “C’mon, kid, where are you?” she whispered.
Claire braced her hand atop one of the old, broken desks, then snatched it back when her fingers stuck in the tacky, damp layer of dust that coated the surface. Curling the sticky fingers into her palm, she leaned around the end of the stack and shone her light into the space between the desks and the wall. “Don’t be afraid,” she warned, hoping she’d find a huddled child.
Empty.
The darkness won. A breath of air whispered across the back of her neck, standing her hair there on end and flooding her skin with goose bumps. “Who’s there?”
She swung around with the light, catching a glimpse of a moving shadow, darting from one gloomy corner to the next. Her heart stopped for an instant, then thundered back to life, hammering at the walls of her chest.
She was out of here. She couldn’t do this alone. She needed help.
“I’ll be back!” she shouted, needing reassurance herself.
Desperate to orient herself in the darkness, she trailed her fingers along the stacks of desks, uncaring of the grunge that caught beneath her fingernails. The light at the far stairs marked the most visible escape route. Needing light as much as she needed her next breath, Claire hurried her steps.
One. Two. Something hard smacked against her right forearm. Claire screamed. Pain bloomed up to her elbow and tingled down into her fingers. The flashlight flew from her grasp and skittered away into the darkness. “No!”
Long fingers closed around her throbbing wrist and yanked her around. Blackness in the black. A fleeting impression of one shadow, darker than the rest, almost tall enough to brush the ceiling. Another hand encircled her throat. Leather gloves. They were soft against her skin. The fingers inside that glove were not.
Claire gasped for air, kicked out, clawed.
The shadow lifted her up onto her toes. The glove squeezed.
But in the instant she knew she couldn’t breathe, the vise around her neck stilled. Her heels hit the floor and the shadow shoved her, hard.
Claire careened back into the desks. She hit one with her shoulder blade and tumbled to the floor with it. Her hip smacked into concrete and the desks toppled around her, onto her.
She covered her head and curled into a ball to absorb the blows. But almost as soon as the vibrations of wood and metal hitting concrete stopped resonating through her bones, the hand snatched her again.
Claire made a fist and came up swinging. The punch landed with a satisfying flinch of the man’s shoulder. But his grip on her arm didn’t budge. She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound caught and rasped in her throat. Every imagined terror that had haunted her in the darkness assailed her.
Valerie Justice with a bullet in her head and her chest.
A man in black, whose heavy footsteps vibrated across the floor.
Death, coming to take her the same way he had taken her mother.
Panic welled up inside her, stealing her breath, cancelling out common sense. Claire cursed being small and deaf and too sheltered and rich to have ever learned how to fight for herself.
The shadow spun her around, and suddenly she was locked up against something solid and warm. A hand covered her mouth, muffling whatever sounds she could make. Her flailing arms were pinned to her sides, her back and bottom pressed tight against muscle and bone.
Not a shadow. A man.
Claire shimmied and twisted, but there was nowhere to go. Something warm and moist brushed the rim of her ear. Deep, insistent tones murmured into her brain.
Her panic shorted out on a single, delayed discovery.
No gloves.
The hands that held her were callused and warm and bare against her skin and lips. The hard body that molded itself to hers took shape and form—matching and surpassing the images she’d only observed. His scent, a hint of leather blended with the earthy appeal of soap and hard work, filled her nose with each panicked breath.
Not any man. A.J.
“Shh, baby. It’s me.” She couldn’t be sure of the words he whispered against her ear, but she heard them in her soul.
“A.J.” She went limp with relief and his hold on her eased, changed. It was no longer his strength overpowering her, restraining her. It was his strength supporting hers, cradling her in a tight embrace.
The fear that had fogged her brain cleared enough to let her know her surroundings again. The lone light was off. But, like before, the light from the landing at the top of the stairs provided enough illumination for them both to get a glimpse of the door swinging shut.
The shadow who’d attacked her—the man in black—was escaping.
Claire felt the tension in A.J., the poised tiger ready to pounce on his prey. But he held himself still, for her. He stayed rooted to the spot, holding her tight, his lips pressed to the charging pulse beneath her ear, whispering words she could only feel.
But Galvan was getting away.
She reached for his hand where A.J. had palmed it against her hip. “Go. Go after him. I’ll be okay.”
There was no hesitation in his movements. There was no time to regret her brave words, either. Without ever breaking contact with her entirely, A.J. took her hand in his and pulled her along behind him. They crossed the basement, ran up to the landing. He pulled out his black gun and pushed her behind him before nudging the door open a crack. Claire curled her fingers into a handful of navy coveralls and clung to the sheltering wall of his back.
She peered around his shoulder into the flashing alarm lights, but the hallway was empty. Claire could hear sirens now, but she suspected the firefighters wouldn’t find anything but a mess of broken desks in the basement.
A.J. hurried to the closest exit and led her outside, into what passed for light beneath the clouds brewing in the sky. The tension she felt in his coiled muscles never relaxed. He was scanning the grounds, and those all-seeing eyes weren’t finding what he was looking for. She actually jumped when his gaze finally dropped and landed on her.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
Claire shook her head and reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears as nerves still worked their way out of her system. “Just scared.”
“Madre dios.” The curse was followed by a string of foreign obscenities she couldn’t make out. But his grim expression made their meaning clear. He holstered his weapon, then reached for her right hand. Cradling her forearm, he pushed up her sleeve and inspected the purplish, palm-sized welt on her wrist. “He got to you. That son of a bitch got to you.”
“It could have been worse.” Gentle as his touch was, there was something angry roiling in the depths of A.J.’s eyes that left her wanting to stroke the tight line of his mouth or give him a hug or say something wise to ease emotions that seemed almost too much for him to contain. But since she didn’t know how to help him, Claire pulled away and tugged her sleeve back down to her wrist. “I think he must have heard you coming. That’s when he ran.”
“Did you see the guy’s face? Was it Galvan?”
“I didn’t really see him. He was tall enough. He wore jeans and something dark on top. But I think…” Fear clawed at the tatters of Claire’s emotional energy. She took a step back toward the building. “Wait. There was a child down here. I saw him go…” Her feet stopped and her voice trailed away. She hugged herself tightly around her waist, feeling useless and foolish and completely at Galvan’s mercy. There was no child.
“I’m such an idiot,” she murmured out loud. “Such a naive idiot. He lured me down there to…to…”
“Come here.” A.J. made sure she read his intent before wrapping his arms around her and pulling her up to his chest. Palming the back of her head, he pressed her nose into the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Claire nuzzled into the gap that caught his warmth and scent between his collar and throat. Her own hands snuck around his waist and latched on tightly, huddling as close to the security of A.J.’s embrace as he’d let her.
The hand at her throat had meant business. If A.J. hadn’t shown up when he had—if he hadn’t come looking for her in the first place, then she might be a little more than beat up around the edges. She’d be more than terrified.
She’d be the next name on Galvan’s list.
She’d be dead.
Chapter Six
The Fourth Precinct conference room had been taken over by a brain trust of detectives and investigators coming together to pool information, turning the bright white walls and long oak-topped tables into an organized hive of activity resembling a command center.
“So we’ve got his attention?” Assistant District Attorney Dwight Powers was practically slathering at the mouth at the report that Dominic Galvan had surfaced to pay Claire a visit.
If the guy smiled once, if he even so much as smirked, A.J. was going to go over there and take him down. Fortunately for Powers’s sake, and for A.J.’s professional standing as a police officer, the A.D.A. never smiled. Never. It was one of the traits that made him such a tenacious opponent in the courtroom. Of course, a man who’d lost everything the way Powers had probably found little to smile about in life.
But if the big man in the blue suit took one iota of pleasure in putting Claire up as a pawn again to bring in Galvan—if the A.D.A.’s plan put one more bruise on her fair skin—then A.J. intended to forgo both compassion and professional courtesy and lay the man flat on his ass.
But Claire was holding her own. She answered each of his questions about the attack clearly and concisely, despite her nervous habit of tucking her hair behind her ears, then just as quickly smoothing it back in place to hide her sound transmitters and speech processors.
Obliquely, A.J. wondered why she was so self-conscious about a handicap that wasn’t truly a handicap for her. Claire was a far better communicator than he’d ever be. Words and emotions came easily to her, and she could express herself in two ways. Three, if he counted those pretty blue eyes that had reprimanded him, desired him and revealed her trust. How the hell men like Rob Hastings or her father could ever ignore the truth in those eyes was beyond his comprehension.
Right now, those blue eyes revealed fatigue, wariness—and a glow of determination that was the only thing keeping A.J. on his side of the room, while Dwight Powers grilled her and took notes on the other.
“Boo.”
With merely a blink and a shift of his gaze, A.J. looked sideways at Josh, who pushed a fresh cup of coffee into his hand. A.J. took a long drink from his cup before responding. “I saw you coming.”
“Sure you did.” Josh sat on the back table and crossed his arms, imitating A.J.’s position. “Nobody’s gonna hurt her here.”
That made A.J. turn and look at his partner. “Am I that obvious?”
“Nothing is ever obvious with you, amigo.” Josh nodded to acknowledge Merle Banning walking into the room and coming over to them. “I’ve just gotten to know you well enough over the years that I can tell you’re off your game.”
He raised a hand before A.J. could defend himself. “Now, mind you, you’re so much better at reading a scene and keeping your cool than the rest of us, that you’re still gettin’ the job done. Claire’s in one piece and we’re building a solid case against Galvan.” A.J. sipped his coffee and let him talk. “The word I’m getting on the street is that outside help was called in to do Slick Williams’s murder. Probably Mort’s, too. Galvan fits the profile. And you, partner of mine, came close to nabbing the guy today.”
Josh leaned in for a conspiratorial whisper before Banning joined them. “But the day A. J. Rodriguez drinks his coffee with milk and sugar is the day I know something—or someone—has finally gotten under your skin.”
A.J. looked down into his mocha-colored drink, just now tasting the liquid in his mouth and realizing it lacked the rich, bitter flavor he liked. “Touché, amigo. But it’s guilt that I’m feeling. Yeah, maybe she stirs a few hormones, but I’m more concerned that an innocent woman has gotten dragged into something way too dangerous. She’s gonna get hurt. More than she has already if we’re not careful. I’ve got enough on my conscience.”
“Don’t worry.” Josh wasn’t buying the explanation A.J. wanted to believe. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“And what secret would that be?” Merle Banning joined them, donning his glasses and opening the manila folder he carried. “That you’ve got your eye on Miss Winthrop?”
Was everybody talking about it? A.J. stood. He was just doing his job. He shouldn’t feel anything for Claire Winthrop; he didn’t want to feel anything. So what if she fit so perfectly against his body that she could have been made for him? So what if her innocence spoke like salvation to the cynical soul inside him? So what if every cell in him burned with the urge to kiss her in exactly the way she’d asked him to last night?
That didn’t mean he cared about the woman.
But Josh was shaking so hard with barely contained laughter that he had to set down his coffee before it sloshed over his hand. He pointed at Banning, who had the temerity to be grinning behind his folder. “He’s the smart one around here. I can’t help if he figured it out, too.”
A.J. crossed to the trash can by the door and dumped his drink. “Just tell me what you found out about Valerie Justice and the Winthrops, and I’ll forget that you two—whom I outrank, by the way—ever had this conversation.”
“Yes, sir,” Josh and Banning echoed in unison.
Right, like pulling rank wasn’t another indication that Claire Winthrop was shattering more than his stereotyped beliefs about the heartless arrogance of the wealthy class. He let his gaze slide across the room to Claire and Powers. Damn. She was staring right back with a question in her eyes. Had she been able to lip-read any of their conversation? He didn’t want to have to explain anything like hormones or getting under his skin.
Not when he didn’t understand it yet himself.
He tore his gaze away and would have even turned his back on those perceptive eyes, but he was even less thrilled to have Banning face her. If there was anything gruesome, or revealing about her father and his business, in what he’d uncovered, A.J. didn’t want Claire to find out by “eaves-dropping” across the room.
“Your report?” he prompted.
Banning rattled off his facts about the Winthrop holdings in a way that helped A.J. understand the vast scope of international trade routes, customs treaties and domestic distribution networks that would certainly interest the men Dominic Galvan usually worked for. Drug trafficking and terrorism had tightened import/export regulations throughout the country. Kansas City, with its international airport and convergence of major rivers, railroads and highways, offered opportunities for the enterprising criminal to transport drugs or launder money. It could be an especially lucrative opportunity if some of those restrictive government regulations could be handled by someone within Winthrop Enterprises.
“Do we have proof anything like that is going on at Winthrop?” A.J. asked. Had his father discovered something illegal at the company eighteen years ago? Antonio, Sr. had been trying to tell him something about Cain Winthrop in his cryptic advice all those years ago.
“Not specifically,” Banning answered, drawing A.J.’s focus back to the case at hand. “But it makes a hell of a motive if someone on the inside hired Galvan to silence anyone who stumbled across the operation. Or who wanted out.”
“The hits on the street would tie in to that theory,” A.J. reasoned. �
��Galvan’s killing off the competition.”
“It can’t be any small coincidence that we’ve got eyewitness testimony putting him in the Winthrop Building,” Josh added. “All the trails are starting to lead back to Claire’s daddy.”
Even the death of A.J.’s father. He processed that nugget of information and filed it away to handle later. “What else?”
Banning filled them in that Valerie Justice had checked in for her flight to Nassau, but that the seat assigned to her was resold—indicating she was a no-show or had changed flights. “The hotel in the Bahamas hasn’t seen her. And as far as I can tell, no boyfriend has checked in, either.”
“Do we know the name of the boyfriend?”
“The hotel lists his reservation as Sid Greenstreet.”
“Like the old movie actor?” asked Josh.
Banning nodded. “I followed the records trail back to the cruise where Ms. Justice supposedly met him. There was no Greenstreet on the passenger manifest or the crew.”
“So we’ve got someone using an alias.” A.J. shook his head. Another twist to a case that got more complicated by the minute. “Or a boyfriend who never really existed.”
“Right. And why go to all that trouble creating a fictitious affair if she didn’t have something to cover up?” Banning closed the file. “I’m looking into her personal and financial records next. In the meantime, CSI sent Holly Masterson with a team over to Valerie’s apartment to see if forensics can turn up anything there. You want me to follow up on this Greenstreet?”
“Did you say Sid Greenstreet?” Claire raised her voice to be heard across the room. Dwight Powers stood when she did and followed her across the room.
Josh and Banning exchanged looks, questioning whether their prize witness had suddenly developed telepathic abilities. But A.J. knew the trick before Powers explained. “Miss Winthrop has been demonstrating her lip-reading proficiency to me.”
The detectives stepped aside to form a circle to include Claire and the A.D.A. Her frown worried A.J. “Why were you talking about Sid Greenstreet?”
