by Marie Jermy
“Indeed, I do. And speaking of your apartment…” He opened the top drawer and removed a set of keys. “I believe these are yours. I would have given them to Detective Anderson last night, but he was in such a hurry to leave. What was his real reason for being at your apartment?”
Disgusted with herself, Jessica snatched the keys from Rafferty’s hand. “You’ve been admiring his reason since I arrived. And if you drool over my breasts again, I’ll slap you with a sexual harassment suit quicker than you can get a hard-on.”
“That quick? I’m impressed. Ah, your tea has arrived. Please, enjoy. I can wait until Detective Anderson gets here before I take your statement. I just hope he’s not going to be too much longer. You know how busy we detectives can be.”
Jessica gratefully accepted the Styrofoam cup the same civilian from earlier handed her before he beat a hasty retreat. It wasn’t chamomile, but she didn’t care. She drank it slowly for two reasons.
One, she’d already given Ross an hour by waiting downstairs at the front desk before asking to see Rafferty, so any extra time was a bonus, especially if she didn’t have to spend it on idle chat with him.
Two, with the way she held the cup in both hands in front of her chest, it not only warmed her fingers but concealed her nipples, which had hardened from the sudden drop in temperature and were pressing against the dress.
Finally, breaking out into goose bumps, she couldn’t take it any longer. “Do you think you can turn the air-conditioning off?”
“Asking for my own office is one thing. Asking for one with air-conditioning would have been pushing it.”
She didn’t like the way Rafferty’s eyes glittered when he stood up and removed his suit jacket as he stepped around the desk. He draped it around her shoulders, and she shivered when icy fingertips brushed against her cheek. She glanced down at the floor, surprised there wasn’t a buildup of snow. Not to mention mothballs. The jacket smelt musty as though Rafferty hadn’t worn it for a long time.
“Miss Ferris. Jessica. Allow me to warm you up.”
A familiar voice sounded behind her. “Detective Rafferty. Scott. Allow me to cool you down!”
Jessica spat the tea she’d just taken back into the cup and turned around. With his hands-on-hips stance and aggressive tone, Ross’s message was clear—hands off my woman. He whipped Rafferty’s jacket from her shoulders and replaced it with his own blazer.
Ah, that felt better. Warmer. And with notes of apple, sandalwood and musk, a more appealing scent. Utterly arousing. Unmistakably male. Undeniably Ross.
“Book your chest-waxing appointment all right?” Rafferty asked as he retrieved his jacket from the floor where Ross had dropped it.
“I did. Next Tuesday morning at eleven.” Ross bent to remove an envelope from the blazer’s right-hand, outer pocket, then moved the chair next to Jessica farther away so he could sit sideways, facing both her and Rafferty. “Chest wax?” he mouthed to her, wincing.
Jessica shrugged as if she didn’t have a clue as to why he winced. He had told her to lie if Rafferty asked for his whereabouts. So, with just the tiniest bit of teasing, she had. The idea of Ross having his chest waxed, or any other part of his incredible body for that matter, was about as laughable as her having the hots for Rafferty. Her earlier prickle of interest had been a blip. “Now that you’re here, Ross, perhaps we can give our statements?”
“Here’s mine.” Ross tossed the envelope to Rafferty, who caught it deftly. “So, what have you been talking about, if it wasn’t your account of last night’s incident?” he asked Jessica.
She scowled at him. Since he’d also asked her to get Rafferty’s life story, he knew exactly what she’d been talking about. Not that she’d learned much. She opened her mouth, but Rafferty answered for her. Though not in the way she intended.
“Jessica was asking me if I was available.”
“Really? I hope you told her it would be unethical for you to become involved with a witness.”
“I recognize that tone from last night, Detective Anderson. Got designs on her yourself? Or am I already trespassing on your territory?”
While it was flattering to watch two men competing for her affections, Jessica was not amused by this cockfight. Particularly when one of them might have been stiff in more ways than one. “Oh, dump the testosterone! My statement?”
“Of course, Jessica.” Rafferty flashed a sharklike smile as he took a statement form from one of the drawers and plucked the solitary pen from the holder. “Go ahead. You talk. I’ll write.”
“Right. I’d just returned home…” She paused and made the quick decision not to mention she’d just split up with Ross at the airport. Nobody’s business but hers and Ross’s anyway. “I’d just returned home from the office. I was in my bedroom, lying on the bed.”
“Doing what exactly?” Rafferty asked, his head bowed as he wrote.
Jessica didn’t like the way Rafferty’s tone dripped with innuendo. The urge to provoke him was irresistible. After all, he had asked, so it would be rude not to supply the answer he so obviously, maybe even desperately, wanted to hear. “Masturbating.” He didn’t even twitch. Damn! Then again, what did she expect from a man who was ninety-nine-point-nine percent dead from the eyes down? “I was reading.”
“Newspaper? Magazine? Book?”
“Does it matter?” she huffed.
“Considering there isn’t one piece of reading material in your bedroom, yes, it does matter.”
Since Rafferty’s head was still bowed, Jessica stuck her tongue out at him. “I was thinking, all right?”
“About?”
She looked across at Ross. Her pulse and heart beat kicked up speed. With his arms crossed over his chest, police badge clipped to his belt, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, he was the epitome of one seriously laid-back, yet competent, red-hot-sex-on-legs detective. And potential husband. I was thinking about becoming Mrs. Ross Anderson. “I was thinking about my day at the office. The cases I had. That sort of thing. I also drank a glass of red wine. The doorbell rang, and I answered it.”
Rafferty looked up when she paused. “I am a quick writer. You answered the door. Who was the caller?”
“Well,” she said, drawing out the word, “this is going to sound crazy, but it was Blade Harknett. Or rather his ghost. I could see right through him.” She waited for Ross and Rafferty to say they’d called for the men in the white coats. She looked at them in turn. Ross had made the call. Rafferty, on the other hand, had not. If anything, he gave the impression what she’d said wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. He removed some papers from his drawer and began reading to himself for a few minutes before looking up.
“I have a statement here from a Leonard Crosier, a morgue technician at Mount Sinai, where Harknett’s body was taken on the night of his death. He says, and I quote, ‘I finished cleaning the floor and was just about to leave the room, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement on the trolley that had come in about twenty minutes beforehand. As I turned around, a man, whom I recognized as Senator Williamson’s aide, Blade Harknett, sat up from the partially open body bag. He then unzipped the bag fully, got out, walked past me down the corridor, and disappeared. He didn’t say anything. He had a hole in his forehead.’” Rafferty laid the statement down. “Understandably, Mr. Crosier is being treated for shock.”
Ross scoffed. “Alcohol poisoning, too, I’ll bet. Either that or he’d been sniffing the floor polish. Corpses do not get up and walk out of morgues. And there are no such thing as ghosts,” he added, cutting a withering glance in Jessica’s direction. “What about the meathead I shot up the ass in Miss Ferris’s bedroom last night? I take it he’s dead?”
“Very.”
“Have you identified him yet?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“No driving license. No identifying papers. No match with DNA. And the small matter of somebody chopping his fingers off.”
“Dental
records,” Ross pressed. “Or did somebody pull his teeth, too?”
“Funny. Real funny.”
“I was being serious.” Ross paused to scratch his nose. “Just deviating slightly, is there any security camera footage from the bar where Harknett received his invitation for playing harp on a little, white, puffy cloud? And that is me being funny.”
Rafferty shook his head. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
Rafferty regarded Ross for a long moment, before turning to Jessica. “Please, Jessica, carry on with your statement.”
“I, uh, answered the door. Harknett, he, um, he said…Did somebody really cut that man’s fingers off?” she asked, shuddering.
“Yes,” Rafferty replied. “So, Harknett said what?”
“He said, ‘I’ve come for my—’” The hard, flat, rectangular-shaped object in the blazer’s inside pocket as she pulled it closer around her caused her to stop. The BlackBerry. She sneaked a quick glance at Ross and caught the perceptible shake of his head.
“I’ve come for my…what?” Rafferty prompted.
“‘For my revenge.’”
Rafferty quirked a skeptical brow. “Really?”
“Really, really.” She smiled sweetly. “After he said, ‘I’ve come for my revenge’, the man who Ross shot appeared. One of them, I don’t know who, grabbed me by the throat and pushed me back into the living room. I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t breathe. I was going to die. But then Ross arrived…”
She stopped when Rafferty held up a hand, removed Ross’s statement from the envelope and proceeded to read it. She looked at Ross and mouthed, “I love you.” She sighed when he averted his eyes and took an interest in the empty wire tray on the desk.
“Detective Anderson. Ross,” Rafferty said, rolling the R and drawing out the s’s. “Why did you call on Jessica?”
“Can’t you read?” Ross sneered.
“My mistake.”
Jessica silently cursed when Rafferty switched his attention to her. Why, oh, why, had she not asked Ross what he was going to write in his statement, instead of flirting with him that morning? She realized, of course, that she knew him well enough not to have written the real reason for his visit. Having a woman break up with him in public could dent a man’s ego, especially when only moments before she had near enough kissed his face off.
So what had Ross written? Racking her brains for an answer, she stared right back at Rafferty, trying to act in control, despite every impulse she had to wilt under his intense stare. It was like he was looking at her, yet through her at the same time. She began to wonder if he had X-ray vision. Could he see the BlackBerry? Did he even know it was what Harknett wanted from her? She then jumped when his telephone jangled.
“Excuse me for a minute.”
Jessica would have quite happily given Rafferty more than a minute. A lifetime to be exact. She turned to Ross, hoping he’d give her some kind of clue as to the content of his statement, but his attention was still fixed firmly on the wire tray.
“She’s here…Him, too. Why do you ask? Dammit! Didn’t you post somebody at the morgue?”
The word morgue had both Jessica and Ross turning their attention back to Rafferty, who, with another curse, slammed the receiver back into its cradle and appeared to do a slow burn.
Jessica felt a sliver of fear ripple through her as Rafferty once again drilled his black eyes into her. “What’s happened at the morgue?” she asked, the tremor to her voice all too evident.
Rafferty ignored the question. He bowed his head and picked up his pen. “Let’s carry on with your statement. Where were we? Ah, yes. What was the reason for Detective Anderson calling on you?”
“Never mind that!” she screeched, making Rafferty look up. “What’s happened at the morgue?”
“I’d also be interested in knowing that,” Ross added.
“It would seem the man you shot and so eloquently named ‘Meathead’ has disappeared.”
“Don’t tell me. He unzipped his body bag, got up, and walked out,” Ross sneered. “Looks like there’s a real problem with sniffers at the morgue.”
“Ross! This is serious!” Jessica again screeched.
“She’s right,” Rafferty said, backing her up. “By the bruises I can see, Jessica has been seriously assaulted. Her life has been threatened. By Harknett.”
“Yeah, right. And I’m Elvis Presley.”
Rafferty bit out a short, humorless laugh. “Okay, let me word it differently, in a way you’ll understand. Somebody, somewhere, for some reason, wants Jessica dead. I think we both agree she needs protecting—”
“And I’ll be the one doing the protecting,” Ross cut in. His blue eyes turned glacial. As if he needed reminding Jessica’s life had been threatened. He’d already saved her twice and would do it again in a heartbeat.
“How? You’ve got a chest-waxing appointment.”
“Not until next Tuesday,” Ross snidely reminded Rafferty. “By which time the threat to Miss. Ferris’s life will be a distant memory. You said last night you haven’t mastered the art of walking through walls, but I presume you’ve mastered the art of tracking down and putting a would-be killer behind bars?”
“This may come as a surprise to you, Detective Anderson, but I am on your side. And of course, I will do everything I can to help you. However, I’d still like to know how you intend to protect Jessica.”
“By hiding her in the last place on earth anybody, alive or dead, will even think of looking for her.”
“Where? Okay, so you don’t trust me enough to answer that question,” Rafferty deduced at Ross’s stony silence. “Can I ask then if you intend to protect her with that Magnum forty-four at your hip?”
“I do. Why?”
“Because it’s not going to be enough. Not for what you’ve got coming your way.”
“Which is what exactly?” Ross didn’t care for Rafferty’s dark smile. He cared even less for his answer.
“Hell on earth, Detective Anderson. Hell on earth.”
Chapter 10
“Jeez, what next? Garlic, a crucifix, and a wooden stake?”
Ross expelled a derisive snort as he pulled open the glass door to the rear of the precinct. Quickly scanning the parking lot and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he grabbed Jessica with one hand, gripped the butt of his Magnum with his other, and marched over to where he had parked her Mini.
The rest of their time spent with Rafferty had been a blur. He couldn’t even say for certain whether Jessica had finished giving her statement or not. The only thing he could recall, and with startling clarity, was Rafferty’s unfathomable expression when presenting him with what he described as a “smart” weapon, guaranteed to stop any man, living or otherwise, in their tracks. Smart weapon his ass! It was a standard police issue Beretta. It was still a mystery why he’d taken it and tucked it down the back of his jeans.
“Ross, slow down! My legs aren’t as long as yours.”
Visions of silky smooth, shapely legs wrapped around his waist while he drove himself into her hot pussy came to mind. “Debatable,” he muttered. Her figure-hugging dress and the fact she was naked underneath were seriously intruding on the seriousness of the situation. Jessica’s life was on the line. He had to get his brain out of his pants and back into his head. Easier said than done, especially when those visions refused to clear.
“What was that? And what’s this?” Jessica cried, her eyes widening as she was pulled around to the passenger door.
“What does it look like?” Bemused by her aghast expression, Ross explained, “After I retrieved the BlackBerry from your apartment, I discovered I had a flat. I didn’t want to waste time on changing it, so since we need wheels, I took your Mini. Did you know you’d left it unlocked?”
“But how did you start it? I’ve got the keys.” She dangled a bunch of keys in front of his face.
“I hot-wired it.” Her aghast expression increased as she peered in the window at the dam
aged steering column cowling and the dangling wires. “Look, I know it’s your pride and joy, but—”
“You don’t understand. It’s not mine anymore. I sold it. The money I was going to get was going to be the first payment I agreed to pay for the back rent I owed on Magnum Investigations. She’ll never buy it now.” She spun around and poked her forefinger into his chest. “Thanks, Ross. You’ve just cost me five grand.”
Ross felt something kick in his gut. Jessica’s anguish was very real. And very honest. “I’ll pay for the damage. Have it fully serviced and cleaned. It’ll look as if it’s just left the showroom. You’ll find another buyer, no prob. And you’ll get more than five grand. Hell, if it weren’t a stick shift the size of a sardine tin, I’d buy it for eight.” Her smile was soft and pretty. Something else kicked, this time in his chest. He grimly suspected it was one of those steel barriers slipping. He opened the door and nearly shoved her into the passenger seat. “Let’s go, Jessica.”
* * * *
Jessica couldn’t stop the giggle that bubbled up when Ross wedged himself behind the steering wheel. Even if he’d been in the backseat, he’d still have looked squashed. Another giggle escaped when he slouched down to avoid flattening his head against the roof.
“Oh, laugh it up Miss Fit-For-A-Straitjacket-For-Believing-In-Ghosts Ferris. Or I’ll take a tin opener to this can and turn it into a convertible.”
She winced when he crunched gears and shot out of the parking lot with all the speed of a rocket. “Ross, be careful, or it’ll need more than a full service. And don’t poke fun at me for believing in ghosts, not when I know you’re a believer, too.”
“And how do you figure that?” He darted between lanes in order to beat the heavy build-up of traffic then braked sharply when a familiar vehicle suddenly pulled in front of him. “Great, just great. As if I haven’t enough fond memories of our fine city’s waste disposal system.” The yellow cab beside him turned onto a side street, so he moved across to fill the space, accelerated, and overtook the garbage truck, cutting across it just in time to turn down the street he wanted.
