She’d felt it before, when Charlotte had accused her of acting out of jealousy.
“Are you here to arrest me?”
“Generally speaking, I don’t ask people whom I’m about to arrest to have a spot of tea with me before I break out the handcuffs.”
She nodded, still outwardly calm except for that odd sense that she was like a tea kettle perched on a burner. Rapidly approaching a boil. “Then I’d like for you to leave.”
“Jillian –”
She jerked her gaze away from his identification and actually felt her eyes flash fire. “Leave.”
His jaw clenched, but he shook his head. “Not yet.”
She pushed away from the counter. “If you don’t get out of this kitchen right now, I’ll –”
“You’ll what? Call the police?”
Her head drew back as if he’d slapped her. “You… bastard.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I probably am. I fully admit that I’ve done you wrong. But regardless of that, I’m not leaving until I tell you what I came to tell you. If you’ll sit back down and listen, I’ll be out of your hair in ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.”
She laughed. Cackled, really. It was a sound of disbelief. “You lied to me. And yet you expect me to sit and listen to whatever you have to say?”
“I didn’t lie.”
A strangled noise emerged from her throat. “Let me guess: you simply omitted a few things.”
He at least had the grace to look slightly shamefaced. “That’s right.”
“That’s right. That’s right.” Rigid with fury, Jillian gave a sharp nod. “Okay then. If you won’t leave, I will.”
She marched out of the kitchen.
Jesse caught up with her in the hallway, his hand clamping down on her shoulder. “Jillian, wait.”
“Don’t touch me.”
He lifted both hands.
She stalked toward the front door.
“Damn it, Jillian.”
He grabbed her again, and she shook off his hand before whirling around and raising her own. She saw that he was braced for the slap she’d been about to deliver, so she lowered her arm. “I won’t be a cliché.”
“I’m glad to hear it, especially since I was prepared to let you get in one shot.”
“Oh, you were going to let me, were you? How chivalrous.”
“You have a right to be angry.”
“I also have a right as an individual to be free from being harassed by federal agents inside my home, but yet here you still are.”
“I’m trying to be reasonable here,” he retorted “and handle this professionally, but that’s difficult when you’re acting like a child.”
She ignored the aspersions he cast on her maturity in favor of addressing the more salient point. “Professional? You call lying to someone – and omission is lying, however much you want to believe otherwise – pretending to be something you’re not and then kissing them blind while shoving your hand under their skirt to be professional?”
He hesitated. “No. And I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you’re sorry. Well then, that makes everything better.”
“Look, if we could just sit down and discuss this like rational human beings –”
“Rational.” She nodded. “Yes, let’s be rational. In fact, if you had been rational from the beginning – because in retrospect, meeting you at Brian’s party was a set-up, wasn’t it?” And she swallowed the hurt of that. She’d have to deal with Brian later. “Anyway, if you both had treated me as a rational human being rather than someone that you had to, to trick because… what? I’m too emotionally unstable to handle the questions that needed to be asked? You…” she stopped. Drew a breath. “The questions that detectives Axelrod and Gannon asked that night. You’re part of that investigation. That’s what this is all about.”
She hadn’t phrased it as a question, but he nodded anyway. “Yes. And I hope you can appreciate how difficult it was for Brian when we discovered your card.”
“Right. How difficult for Brian. So difficult, in fact, that he lost all of his mental faculties and decided that this elaborate…” she waved a hand around “production was a more reasonable approach than simply telling me what had happened and giving me an opportunity to answer any questions that arose without all the subterfuge.”
“And you wouldn’t have panicked if the cops had simply shown up at your door, right? Because that’s probably what would have happened if Brian hadn’t lobbied to keep you from being treated as a hostile potential witness. Given your history with the Savannah PD, I don’t think they would have been inclined to handle you gently.”
He had a point, but she wasn’t ready to acknowledge it. “He could have simply told me –”
“No,” Jesse interrupted, his voice tight with frustration. “No, he couldn’t. Because one of the hard and fast rules of an investigation is that you don’t warn witnesses or suspects ahead of time so that they can prepare their response. You want them off guard. He could not say anything to you ahead of time. And if he’d tried, our SAC would have benched him so fast his head would have resembled a scene from The Exorcist. What we did was unorthodox, yes. And not entirely what you might call honest. But it was the only solution all parties could agree upon. The questions were asked and you also had a… let’s just describe my role that night as a buffer.”
“That night. So you didn’t intend to have any contact with me afterward?”
“Not after I returned your key, no. Bumping into you at the Y was purely an accident.”
“And I guess you accidentally asked me out for coffee as well.”
He hesitated, and then shook his head. “That was a deliberate decision.”
“Because you wanted to interrogate me?”
“Because I wanted to be with you. I tried to tell myself that I was just being a nice guy or conversely, that I could take the opportunity to dig a little more deeply. But that’s bullshit. I would have done just about anything – anything – to keep you from walking out that door without me.”
She stood there, raw breaths tearing in and out of her lungs, her heart trembling on a precipice that she was afraid to peer into. “Fine. Fine, I understand. And now that you’ve explained everything, I would like you to leave.”
“I haven’t explained everything.”
She threw up her hands. “I don’t want to hear anymore, okay? Whatever you have to say about… what happened between us, I’m not interested. It’s over. And it won’t be happening again.”
“Jillian,” he called after her when she rounded the newel post and started up the stairs. The tread squeaked, reminding her that she’d forgotten again to tighten the screws. That just pissed her off even further.
“Do not touch me!” Her voice went shrill when he impeded her progress up the stairs.
“I’ll stop touching you when you stop running away.” He pulled on her shoulder until her back was to the wall. She glared up at him. He glared back.
But then his expression changed fraction by fraction from one of intense frustration to… something else. His gaze landed on her mouth.
“Jesus,” he said, the word sounding like it had been ripped from his throat. “You’re beautiful.”
“No need to pretend to be attracted to me any longer,” she spit back. “You’ve already accomplished your plan.”
His head jerked up. “That wasn’t part of the plan,” he said. “And I wasn’t pretending.”
Her breasts rose and fell in a rapid pulse beneath her sweater. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Actually, it does.”
He leaned closer, inch by tortuous inch, giving her plenty of time to stop him. And she should. She should. But God help her, despite everything she’d just learned, she still didn’t want to.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” He placed his hands on the wall on either side of her head. “You probably wish you did, but you don’t. I kind of wish you did, too, becaus
e that would make this a hell of a lot easier.” He leaned in, close enough for their breath to mingle, and murmured in her ear. “The first time we met? Something clicked. I looked at you and everything else fell away, until you were the only thing I could see. And I’m still seeing you. It’s damned inconvenient.”
Despite everything, the corners of her mouth trembled into the tiniest of smirks. “Well then. Serves you right.”
“Probably.” He pulled back a bare inch. “I want to kiss you right now. I want to put you over my shoulder and continue right on upstairs and toss you onto your bed. And do… everything.”
Jillian’s bones began to melt and she was on the verge of saying “Why don’t you?” but she could see it in his eyes. “But you can’t.”
He paused, and then gave a slight shake of his head. “I can’t. Not yet. There’s some very bad stuff going on and somehow, Jillian, you’re connected to it. Damn it.”
“What?” her heart began to pound again, this time with anxiety. “I’m not. I told Brian and the detectives and you, repeatedly. I did not know that man Losevsky. I don’t know why he had my card.”
Jesse pulled back even further, and studied her face. “Maybe not. But maybe you do know who killed him.”
“What?”
Jesse sighed. “Sit down, will you? I haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours. I’m tired.”
Because she’d noticed previously that he was in fact exhausted – and because she wasn’t sure her own legs would hold her – Jillian slid down the wall to sit on the step. Jesse sat down on the one beneath her, and leaned against the rail, hands dangling between his knees.
“You were in Katie’s restaurant all afternoon yesterday. And there are plenty of witnesses to that fact.”
Jillian didn’t like the sound of that. “Why should I need witnesses as to my whereabouts?”
“Gannon’s dead.”
She didn’t fully process what he was saying. “What?”
“Detective Gannon. I can’t go into too many details,” he said, visibly measuring his words. “But suffice it to say that he did not die of natural causes.”
“Oh my God.” Her hand flew to her mouth, and then dropped away, boneless. “And you think I had something to do with it?”
“No. If I thought that, I wouldn’t be sitting here. And you’d likely be down at the Barracks, being interrogated by some very angry detectives from the Savannah PD.”
“Then why did you say that about my whereabouts yesterday?”
Jesse dragged his hand down his face. “I can’t tell you. I’m sorry,” he said when she started to protest. “I can’t. I can’t – won’t – compromise an ongoing investigation by leaking information.”
“Then why did you bring this up? To scare me to death?”
“Not to death, no. But I don’t mind if you’re scared. If you’re scared, you’ll be extra cautious. Jillian.” He measured his words again. “Were you acquainted with Detective Gannon prior to the night he interviewed you in your living room?”
“What? No!”
Jesse nodded. “And you’d never been to the Shady Lady before the other night?”
“Never.” She shook her head for emphasis. “Never. Jesse, you are scaring me.”
“Have you ever had any involvement with illegal drugs, using or selling?”
Jillian stared to climb to her feet. “I’m not going to keep answering questions that I’ve already answered. Especially not without an attorney.
“Jillian, wait. Please.”
It was the utter exhaustion in his tone that caused her to reconsider. She slowly sat back down. “Fine. But I’m not so naïve that I’ll allow you to soften me up with some flattery and forget that you’re an agent.”
“Is that really what you think I was doing?”
She studied his face, his tired, beard-roughened face, and wasn’t sure if her answer was what her gut told her or merely what she wanted to believe. “No. But damn it Jesse, you lied. It’s difficult to trust you after that.”
“And I understand. And I promise to be as straightforward with you as I can be from this point forward – if you promise to be straightforward with me.”
She considered, and then nodded. “Okay.”
He hesitated, and then reached out and took her hand. “I have one more question, and I want you to be completely honest with me. If there’s something you’re… afraid to reveal because you think it will put either yourself or Katie or anyone else that you care about in danger, I can promise you that the Bureau will do everything within its power to keep you safe. I will do everything in my power to keep you safe.”
“I appreciate that. I do. But there’s nothing like that. I didn’t know Losevsky, and the only time I’ve ever been to the Shady Lady is the night I bumped into you. Working, I guess you were,” she said with a note of reproach in her voice. “And I’d never even seen or heard of Detective Gannon until I saw him standing on the sidewalk in front of the house. And as to your last question, I have never sold, manufactured or used illegal drugs. Growing up I feared disappointing my aunt too much to experiment, and then after the incident with the raid on Katie and I’s apartment, I feared the police. And now, well, I just don’t have much interest. You have to believe me.”
She could see that he wanted to. Eventually, he nodded. “I can’t say any more. If my boss knew I’d come to talk to you like this, he’d probably chew my ass. But I needed to come clean with you because… well, because. And more than that, I needed to tell you to be careful. I know you said you don’t know anything, but if you think of anything – anything at all – that you think might somehow be pertinent, I want you to call me or Brian. Maybe a conversation you overheard in Russian, whatever. But call.”
She realized what that meant. “You heard me speaking Russian to the bartender the other night.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“I can tell you what I –”
“I know what you said.”
“You speak… oh,” she said when she understood what he was getting at. Someone had translated it for him. Maybe even the bartender herself. Maybe she was an undercover agent, since the Shady Lady seemed to be playing a large role in their investigation. “I see.”
Jesse studied her another long moment, and then gave her hand a squeeze before climbing to his feet. He stretched, and then looked down at her. “Be careful. Please.”
His expression was unguarded, allowing her to see the depth of his attraction. His… concern.
“You, too.”
He nodded. “I’ll show myself out.”
Jillian watched him walk down the steps and out the front door. He didn’t look back.
She let her head rest against the wall, studied the plaster medallion on the ceiling.
And wondered if she’d somehow made a terrible mistake.
JESSE cut the crime scene tape from the doorway, and then stepped aside so that the building manager could unlock the apartment.
“Terrible thing,” the man said, though there was a sort of avidness in his eyes that Jesse recognized. Sure enough, he peered inside after opening the door, no doubt hoping to catch sight of something which he could later describe to his friends.
Violent death was exciting when it didn’t happen to you or one of your loved ones.
“Thank you,” Jesse said, stepping in front of him to block his view. Not that there was much to see. No blood spatter or broken furniture. Gannon’s death had caused little disturbance to the physical environment of the apartment.
“Do you, uh, know when the investigation might be finished? I’ve got a waiting list,” the man explained. “This building is pretty popular thanks to the location.”
“I’m sure the SCMPD will let you know just as soon as possible.”
“Yeah. Well, okay. Just call me when you’re ready to leave and I’ll lock up again.”
“Will do.”
He waited for the man to toddle off before going in and shutting the door. He’d sp
ent the entire evening and most of the night here, and wasn’t keen on being back again.
But there was something he had to check out.
He glanced around at the remnants of the forensic investigation, the finger print powder laying like comic book shadows over various surfaces – artificially dark and designed to imply something sinister around every corner.
Shaking off the maudlin thoughts, Jesse located the coat closet first and inspected it from top to bottom. Having no luck – depending upon how you looked at it – he closed that door and then went toward Gannon’s bedroom. The sheets and mattress pad had been stripped to check for any evidence that the man might not have been alone in the apartment yesterday. Jesse doubted he’d invited a woman over when he was sick enough to call in, to douse himself with cold medicine, but you never knew. And if there had been a woman – or hell, a man – then maybe they knew something about what had caused Gannon to hang himself.
If he’d hanged himself.
Until there was conclusive evidence that that was indeed the case, the detectives would pursue this like any other suspicious death – as a potential homicide.
And it was that which had Jesse concerned.
He opened up Gannon’s closet – pretty good sized, he noted objectively. Gannon had it filled. The man had been something of a clothes horse, a little vain about his appearance. Jesse wondered if he dressed sharply to disguise the fact that his hair was thinning, his gut starting to paunch. And felt a pang of sympathy for the man whom he hadn’t liked very much.
Glancing down, Jesse noted that Gannons’s shoe rack was gone. He’d provided a sample of the concrete dust from Jillian’s basement for the lab to make a comparison against whatever they found on the soles of the detective’s shoes. If this particular expedition confirmed his suspicions, having evidence that Gannon had indeed been inside Jillian’s house would be of particular importance.
Jesse pushed aside hanger after hanger, occasionally removing an article of clothing so that he could have a better look. He found nothing that matched what he was looking for.
He closed the closet doors and considered if there was any place else to look. Almost anywhere, if one had been attempting to conceal the evidence.
The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set Page 14
