Force of Nature

by Suzanne Brockmann

  And damn it, he shouldn’t be doing this. This wasn’t just casual sex with some beautiful stranger, which, okay, yeah, under other circumstances he probably would’ve done because why the hell not, since he couldn’t have Annie? But Lillian was kill-the-bunny crazy. There was nothing good that could come of this.

  Nothing at all.

  When they got to Ric’s everything happened too damn fast.

  To start with, there were three dark sedans parked outside of the building—which surely meant trouble.

  Martell was driving. He’d wanted to show off his badass shake-the-tail driving skills to Ricky’s new girlfriend, because despite what the man had said—or more accurately hadn’t said—this Annie was it. Martell knew this because Ric hadn’t told him a freaking thing about her, other than the fact that she was his friend Bruce’s little sister—and not so little anymore.

  Ric hadn’t even invited Martell over to the office to meet her—and she’d been working there for nearly two weeks. This was something that, back when Martell had worked in law enforcement, he would’ve called a big-ass clue.

  The girl looked kind of like that actress, Kate Winslet. The one that Ric liked so much, although it was hard to say which was the chicken and which was the egg. Ric had, after all, known Bruce’s little sister for nearly twenty years—long before he’d seen Titanic.

  Annie Dugan had a softly beautiful face, with ocean-gray eyes that danced with both humor and intellect. Plus she’d looked like she might actually order more than a salad if you took her out to dinner. She also looked as if she wouldn’t break in two if you got a little rambunctious with the naked bedtime games.

  It was more than obvious that Ric was afraid Martell would take one look at his precious Annie, and steal her away, and keep her for his selfish, selfish self.

  The fool really shouldn’t have worried, because the admiration society was mutual. The girl was his—the deal done with some serious cement. Annie Dugan was the President for Life of the Ric Alvarado Fan Club—anyone who couldn’t see that was blind.

  As Martell pulled past Ric’s place, a two-story building in an older Sarasota neighborhood that was part residential, part business, he made the mistake of pointing out that his own car—the one Ric had been driving—was parked in front of the garage. It was there along with another—a rental, it looked like, due to the Enterprise sticker on the bumper.

  It was times like this, when the clues were so damn obvious, that Martell actually missed being a cop.

  “He’s still not picking up.” Annie hung up her cell phone, looking anxiously at the lights shining through the closed blinds on the first floor. That was Ric’s office down there—his apartment on the second floor was dark.

  “I’m going in,” she said, and opened the door, despite the fact that the car was still moving.

  Martell stupidly hit the brakes instead of speeding up and getting the girl the hell out of there. “Annie, wait—”

  “Pierre, stay,” she ordered her dog, and bolted.

  If there was any doubt at all in Martell’s mind regarding her attachment to Ric, it was now gone. There was an element of special attitude that could not be feigned in the body language of a woman marching off to rescue her man, and Annie was walking that walk right down the sidewalk to Ric’s office door.

  There was nothing to do but park her car out front, wave howdy to the folks in the dark sedans lurking down the street, and follow her inside.

  She saw Martell coming, and had the good sense to wait for him at the door.

  Or maybe sense had nothing to do with it. “It’s locked,” she said. “I need my keys.”

  Martell’s choices were either to hand her the keys or grab her and throw her back into the car, but the truth was, he was worried about Ric, too. He unlocked the door for her. “I’m going in first.”

  He put his hand on his sidearm—no point in waving it around in front of the sedan squad, whoever they were—drawing it from its holster only after Annie quietly closed and locked the door behind her.

  The outer office was empty.

  The inner office was…whoa. Martell took a step backward, and bumped into Annie, who was right on his heels.

  “Ric?” she said, disbelief dripping from her voice.

  Ric stood up fast, all but tossing into the air the Victoria’s Secret model who’d been riding him. She bounced on the sofa, titties flying, arms and legs akimbo. It would have been funny, if there hadn’t been a healthy load of hurt mixed in with that scathing disbelief in Annie’s voice.

  At least Ricky’s dick wasn’t hanging out—that would’ve fallen under the heading Too Much To Bear—at least for Martell. Annie appeared to have already crossed that particularly ugly line, because even though they hadn’t quite walked in on Ric playing hide the salami, it was kind of obvious that they damn well might have if they’d caught a few more traffic lights on Route 41.

  Ouch.

  What the fuck was the idiot doing? No doubt about it, Martell was going to have to kick his stupid white ass down the street and back.

  The redhead on the sofa put her raincoat on, tying the belt around her waist. “This is…awkward,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Annie told her, looking at Ric and shaking her head. “It’s been one of those extra awkward nights.”

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  “Just…stop looking at me like that,” Ric said to Annie as Martell ushered Lillian Lavelle into the outer office, closing Ric’s door tightly behind him.

  “Like what?” Annie asked. “Like you’re a shit?” She imitated him badly, making her voice sound deep and stupid. “I don’t have sex with women I’ve only known for twenty-seven minutes. I prefer waiting twenty-eight minutes. And oh, yeah. I really dig the babes who are homicidal—particularly the ones who’ve already shot me.”

  He sighed—a weary-sounding exhale of long-suffering. “I didn’t have sex with her.”

  “Because we came in. You know, I was actually worried about you. What a joke.” Annie sat on the couch before she realized that this was where Ric and Ms. Underwear 1960 had been about to do the nasty. God. But she was too tired to stand up. Too tired, too hurt, and too angry—not just at Ric, but at herself for foolishly thinking that the kisses they’d shared meant anything. Her own brother had warned her about him.

  But seeing him with Lillian, and then finding out that she was the gunperson who’d tried to kill Gordie Junior at Palm Gardens…

  Annie crossed her arms. “So is there a reason you protected her from Burns—I mean, other than because you’re screwing her?”

  “I’m not…” He exhaled, hard. “Look, you work for me. I don’t have to—”

  “Not anymore.”

  “—explain myself to you and…Good, then I assume you’ll be open to a twenty-thousand-dollar severance package.” Ric sat behind his desk and unlocked the drawer that held his checkbook. “On the condition that you return to Boston immediately.”

  What?

  “And you don’t come back,” he added. “Without clearing it first with me.”

  Annie sat back, feeling as completely deflated as she would have been had Ric just kicked her in the stomach. But then she leaned forward. “If you really think Gordon Burns is that dangerous…”

  “I do.”

  “Then you should leave, too,” she told him.

  But he was shaking his head. “I’m not running away.”

  “Then I’m not, either. I retract my resignation.”

  “Annie—”

  “I’m not leaving you to face this alone,” she told him. “You may be a real turd—but it’s not like I agreed to work for you in the first place because I thought you’d suddenly turned into Gandhi. You’ve always been a man-ho—”

  “I’m not a man-ho,” he protested. “And I’m also not alone. I’ve got Martell and—”

  “Lillian?” she finished for him. “You guys make a real awesome Mod Squad. I mean, assuming Julie wore crotchless panties and
carried a .44—with which she accidentally shot Pete. You know, Martell told me he’s a lawyer. Did you know he’s got to be in court at eight tomorrow morning? It’s nearly four A.M. How much longer is he going to be able to stay here, watching your back? And as far as you being a man-ho? Look me in the eye and tell me that if we hadn’t come in when we did, you wouldn’t have had sex with her. Or—and this is where I get the stupid award—that if we’d been alone when you kissed me the way you did in the Palm Gardens parking lot, that you wouldn’t have had sex with me.”

  He couldn’t do it. Ric couldn’t meet her gaze more than briefly. “I’m sorry about that. I am.”

  He took a deep breath and seemed to brace himself, as if he were on the verge of doing something really painful, like purposely hitting himself on the thumb with a hammer. He also finally forced himself to look at her—to hold her gaze.

  “I’ve always…been attracted to you.” He said it with the tone and inflection of someone confessing that they got their jollies from squashing baby bunnies. And he wasn’t done. “I know it must’ve freaked you out when I kissed you, because it really…freaked me out. I know that you’re…who you are, and that you…wouldn’t. Want to. But…I do. Did. Do. Do, okay? Damn it, I’m not going to sit here and lie to you.” He looked at her as if he’d just made some big important point that she should somehow understand. “So there’s another really good reason for you to just…pack up and go back to Boston, okay?”

  Annie stared at him. “I have no idea what you just thought you told me. I’m…Will you please start over. From the part that went: You’ve always been attracted to…me. To me?”

  “Yeah, I know.” He rubbed his forehead as if he had a massive headache. “It’s crazy.”

  She struggled to understand. “Because…I’m Bruce’s sister?”

  He looked up at her as if she were the one who was suddenly making no sense. “Because you’re…you know.”

  But she didn’t know. “Fat?” she tried.

  That obviously pissed him off. “You’re not fat. You’re just…not skinny. You’ve got…curves. Which, yeah, I happen to find…very attractive and…” He closed his eyes, his head in his hands. “Christ, I’m screwing this up even more than I have already. Just…please go back to Boston. Please.”

  “Because I’m…what?” she asked. Wasn’t it just this morning that he’d had such trouble uttering the words blow job in front of her? What was it that he couldn’t say now?

  “I’ll give you thirty thousand dollars as severance.” Ric tried to sweeten the pot. “With that and the money you’ve got saved, you can go back to school—”

  “For the love of God,” Annie exploded. “Will you just finish your fricking sentence? Because I’m what, Ric? Too tall? Too short? Too smart? Too attached to my dog? A liberal? An athlete? Not feminine enough? What?”

  “You’re gay,” he said, and at her total, openmouthed surprise, he asked, “Aren’t you?” He answered it himself. “No, you’re not. Okay, then. That’s…great.”

  “Who told you—” she asked, but he was already answering that one.

  “Bruce told me you were, you know, a lesbian,” Ric said. “The son of a bitch.”

  “Bruce.” Her brother.

  Ric nodded. “At that party, after your college graduation…Mother…of God. It was…Yeah. It was right after I told him how beautiful I thought you looked and…Some detective, huh? I didn’t even do the simple math. I’m going to kill him.”

  “I can’t believe you believed him.” She, too, was going to kill Bruce next time she saw him.

  “Why would he lie?” Again Ric answered his own question. “Because he didn’t want me anywhere near you.”

  “Yeah, but you believed him?”

  “You were always with what’s-her-name,” Ric pointed out. “Cindy.”

  “She was my roommate,” Annie told him. “We were friends. We’re still friends.”

  “And then there was Pam,” Ric said. “You moved in with Pam.”

  “Yeah—because I didn’t want my best friend from fourth grade to die alone,” Annie told him. Which, in the end, she’d failed to do—some friend she’d turned out to be. She had to blink back tears, because she was damned if she was going to cry in front of Ric and have him think she was crying over him.

  He didn’t say anything. He just looked at her, so there they sat, staring at each other, across his desk.

  He finally spoke. “Please go home to Boston.”

  “Boston’s not home anymore,” she told him.

  He nodded, the muscle jumping in his jaw as he clenched and unclenched his teeth. “You know you were right about Lillian,” he told her. “I was seconds from drilling her.”

  Annie just looked at him.

  “And it’s actually kind of funny,” he said. “Now that I know that you’re not a lesbian, I really don’t find you that attractive anymore.”

  She had to laugh. “Are you done?” she asked. “Because if you are, I’d like to make it clear that I’m not sticking around because I think you’re great boyfriend material. On the contrary. I know who you are, Ricky. You find me attractive? Big whoop—because I happen to know that you find every female on the planet attractive. You don’t have to lay it on thick to convince me. I’ve seen that notebook you and Bruce kept during high school—yes, that one,” she added at his horrified reaction. “You’re as much of a dog as he is. I thought maybe you changed, mellowed with age, I don’t know—maybe learned to control your urge to hump everything that moves, but apparently you haven’t. Fine. You suck—but I still love you. We’re friends—it doesn’t really matter to me who you drill. Just know that it’s not going to be me, okay?”

  “That notebook,” Ric said. “It was Bruce’s. I didn’t—”

  “There was a list of girls,” she reminded him. “Written in your handwriting. You called it your Wish List. It was pretty clear that you weren’t aiming really high. I mean, God, Betsy Bouvette was like number two.” Slightly rotund, with glasses the size of a car windshield, Betsy had been the president of the Future Microbiologists Club. She’d lived on the same street as Annie and Bruce. “Did the little picture of a soccer goal next to her name mean that you scored?”

  Ric just sighed. He shook his head, but it was kind of hard not to notice that he didn’t deny it.

  “You really suck. She was nice.”

  “Yeah, she was,” Ric agreed. “And apparently you do care who I drill. Anyone else I should steer clear of, besides you and Betsy Bouvette? Of course, you could just avoid me altogether by going to Boston.”

  “You’re going to need my statement when we go to the police,” Annie told him. “Plus Burns specifically hired both you and me. He liked me, remember?”

  “We’re not going to the police,” he informed her. “Burns has too many local people in his pocket—I don’t want to risk it. We’re going to the feds—you can give your statement from out of town.”

  “Ric—”

  “I’ll give you forty thousand,” he said.

  “What if Burns gets suspicious because I’ve disappeared?” she asked. “What if he decides that you’re too much of a risk, because you can’t even keep your alleged girlfriend—me—in line? And if you come back with an offer of fifty, I’m going to scream.”

  “You’re worried about me,” he clarified.

  “Yes,” she told him.

  “Well, I’m worried about you. You know when Foley hit you, in the limo? And then, when I saw you covered with all that blood…? God damn it, Annie.” Ric’s voice actually broke. “I don’t ever want to be that scared again.”

  “Me neither,” she told him quietly. “Imagine how I felt, knowing that the blood in the car really was yours.”

  He was silent then, for a long time. And when he finally met Annie’s eyes again, his face was resigned. “So. You’re not going to let me die alone either, huh?”

  “Wow,” Annie said. “That was really mean.”

  But Ric’s react
ion was clearly confused—he wasn’t being mean, he was just ignorant. He didn’t know. So Annie told him.

  “Pam killed herself,” she said quietly. “She asked me to help her do it, and I wouldn’t, and she…” She cleared her throat. “So I’m zero for one when it comes to not letting friends die alone.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, clearly stricken. “Annie, I swear, I had no idea.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I get that.”

  And there they sat, Ric still looking at her with his heart in his eyes, like he wanted to climb across his desk and pull her into his arms.

  But he didn’t move, which was good, because it meant that she didn’t have to push him away. The last thing she needed tonight was his arms around her. Although she’d no doubt found the perfect antidote to falling under his spell. From now on, whenever she started thinking about how good-looking he was, or how funny, or smart…All she had to do was picture him on this very couch, sucking face with Lillian Lavelle.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Yeah,” Ric called.

  “This a good time for an update?” Martell pushed the door open, and Pierre came trotting inside. He jumped up onto the couch next to Annie, settling possessively against her thigh, as Martell dumped the leather bag with Burns’s money next to Ric’s desk.

  “I figure it’s better not to leave this out there with Crazy McNightmare,” he continued. “And as far as that shit goes…? Bro, you and I need to talk.”

  “Where is she now?” Ric stood up. “You’ve got to stay with her.”

  “She was starting to piss me off, so I cuffed her to the conference table. She’s not going anywhere.”

  “Did you make that call?” Ric asked.

  “I did,” Martell said. “And I was put on hold, for nearly all that time. When they finally came back on the line, I was careful not to mention your name. But as soon as I said that I was the attorney of an individual who’d had a recent altercation with Gordon Burns in Sarasota, Florida, things moved at warp speed. I had a lengthy conversation with one Mr. Cassidy, who seemed very happy that we called. He knew exactly who you were, and probably even what you had for breakfast—the both of you.” He included Annie in that. “He didn’t say it in so many words, but I’d bet my Aunt LaKisha that you have walked into the middle of a very high-priority FBI investigation. He’s coming here, first thing tomorrow, to talk to you.”