Not Without Risk

by Sarah Grimm

  Justin rolled his shoulders in a vain attempt to loosen the muscles that knotted there. The small clench of empathy nagging at him grew as her eyes welled up with tears.

  “Are we done? It’s been a rough morning and I’d really like to go home.”

  “Almost,” Allan replied. “You’re not planning any trips are you?”

  “I’m…” She cleared her throat, dragged the heel of her palm across her forehead. “No, I’m not planning any trips. If you need anything more from me, you can find me at my studio.”

  “Your studio?”

  “I gave all this information to the uniformed officer who left me in this office.”

  “I understand,” Allan assured her. “But we’ll need the information as well.”

  Paige Conroy opened the purse sitting next to her on the desk and retrieved a business card from its depths. She turned, holding the card in Justin’s general direction.

  He took the card she offered, his fingers grazing hers. A frown formed between her eyebrows at the brief contact. She took a quick step back, then another.

  “Conroy Photography,” Justin read aloud.

  “I have my own studio.”

  “And when you’re not in your studio?”

  “When I’m not in my studio, I’m still at that address. I live above it. Are we done? Can I go now?”

  “I think that will be all for now. If we need anything further, we’ll be in touch.”

  She pulled a set of car keys from the pocket of her suit jacket and was out of the office like a shot, the echo of her heels trailing behind her.

  Justin watched her go, all but running from the room in an attempt to put distance between them. He pushed her business card into the same inner pocket as the picture.

  “Well,” Allan began, “she was a surprise. Very astute.”

  Justin’s gaze remained on Paige’s retreating form. “Yes.”

  “She’s figured out she’s a suspect. But she’s tough, she held it together.”

  “She told us all she knew.”

  “It seemed that way. A cop killing. Shit. Not exactly the type of case you want to come back to, is it, partner?”

  “Two cops are dead. Paige Conroy was right about one thing, I believe the two deaths are connected. It’s more than just their partnership, I can feel it.”

  “Yes, but can you prove it?” When he didn’t respond, Allan spoke up again. “Justin?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you prefer I leave you alone with your thoughts?”

  He turned at Allan’s smart remark and quirked his eyebrow. “Meaning what?”

  “You seem distracted.” Allan gazed pointedly in the direction Paige Conroy had disappeared. “You’ve changed, Justin.”

  “No, I haven’t.” But he was distracted. Distracted by the leggy brunette who’d just left, and the thought that she might be caught up in something beyond her control. Although she’d projected an aura of calm, he wasn’t fooled by her casual exterior. He’d seen the truth in her eyes, the fear she tried to disguise.

  He turned back toward the door, only to find her gone.

  Allan laughed knowingly. “You’re like a brother to me, Justin. I think I know what I’m talking about.”

  “What are you talking about, Allan?”

  “She’s a beautiful woman.”

  “Yes, she is.” Confused, Justin faced his partner. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Paige Conroy is a beautiful woman. I would expect you to notice. But you have many beautiful women in your life, and I’ve never met one who could distract you from the job. Not until now.”

  “Since when do you doubt my ability to do the job?”

  “I don’t doubt your ability, Justin. I’m just voicing an observation.”

  “That Paige Conroy distracts me.”

  “That you should be careful. You said it yourself, two cops are dead. Paige Conroy could very well be the killer.”

  “She didn’t kill St. John. She doesn’t have the upper body strength.”

  Allan’s eyebrow arched.

  “Damn it.” By defending her, he cemented Allan’s opinion. Justin scrubbed a hand across his face. His eyes felt gritty. Pins and needles raced up and down his side. “I’ll do the job, Allan.”

  “And if it includes arresting the woman that just walked from the room?”

  He lifted his chin. Paige Conroy attracted him in a way no woman had done before. She drew him, ignited a fire within him the moment he saw her picture. It burned in his gut still, stronger now that he’d met her.

  Silently, Justin acknowledged that his attraction to her was a complication he didn’t need. He was conducting an investigation. Paige Conroy was a suspect—their only suspect—and that meant hands off. He’d worked hard to get put back on active duty and nothing he felt, no matter its unusual intensity, would affect his job. He was a cop, first and last.

  With renewed fervor, he assured Allan, “Even if it means arresting her.”

  * * * * *

  Paige stood beneath the shower’s pelting rays, her hands against the wall before her. Her head pounded, her body ached with fatigue. A single tear slipped from the corner of her eye.

  She swallowed hard, accepting the act as stress and too little sleep. Under normal circumstances, crying was a weakness she wouldn’t allow herself. But nothing about her day could be labeled normal. From the late-night telephone call, to becoming the number-one suspect in a murder investigation.

  Swallowing back the sob that clawed at her throat, Paige closed her eyes, pushed her head beneath the spray of the water and wet her long mass of hair. She felt dirty, soiled by the brutality of murder. Her hands shook as she worked the shampoo into lather. Guilt filled her.

  Lee deserved better. He deserved remorse, regret for a life cut short. But to allow herself to grieve for him would be opening herself up to pain and sorrow of memories best forgotten. Rick and Leroy were too closely tied together, in life and now in death. She couldn’t recall one without the other. So she kept it all buried inside. She pushed away thoughts of the quiet, sensitive man so brutally murdered that morning, and stowed away the grief. No matter the cost to her sanity.

  Paige turned the water off with a quick twist of her wrist. She stepped from the shower, squeezing some of the wet from her hair before wrapping it in a towel. With swift, brisk movements, she dried herself and pulled a pale blue T-shirt over her head. Her legs she shoved into her favorite jeans, a well-worn pair that offered comfort, both physical and emotional.

  She didn’t bother to take the dryer to her hair, for it just made more of a mess of her curls. Instead, she ran a quick comb through it and left it hanging down her back.

  She left the bath behind, moving on silent feet through the upper floor of her converted warehouse. She needed to rest, she thought, as she shifted the pile of clean towels waiting to be folded to the other end of the couch. She needed to clear her mind. She flopped down and pulled her legs up and under her. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back to lie against the couch. Slowly, her tension eased, her mind cleared. A deep inhale and exhale helped. Tense muscles relaxed.

  With brutal swiftness, the image of Lee’s blood-covered body atop the tangled sheets assaulted her mind. Paige fought back, willed it to recede, but her mind wouldn’t let go. As if turning the lens of her camera, the image shifted into focus until she stood in that third-floor hotel room once more. Silence settled around her, the acrid scent of death filled her.

  Her stomach turned abruptly. Her eyes popped open. Grief, a throbbing ache, settled just beneath her heart, making it difficult to draw a deep breath. She jerked her legs out from under her and shoved her head between her knees. She willed the room to stop spinning.

  A groan slipped from between closed lips. She tightened her jaw in acknowledgment that she wasn’t going to relax anytime soon or get the rest her body cried out for. Her mind wouldn’t shut off.

  Praying with everything inside her that
the room would continue to hold still, she placed trembling hands upon the floor and slowly shifted her gaze from her feet to the wall. When the room stayed in focus and she was fairly confident she could move without her world turning, she stood, heading for the stairs and the studio in the lower level of her home.

  Paige knew now what she had to do. She had to work. Through work, she would find relief, no matter how momentary. And were she to work long and hard enough, she just might be able to fall into exhausted sleep. The kind of dreamless sleep where pain could no longer reach her. Then, perhaps, she could let death go.

  * * * * *

  He shouldn’t have come by.

  Not for the first time that night, Justin repeated his litany. He stood next to the steel outer door, eyes scanning the deserted street behind him, and cursed under his breath. The neighborhood wasn’t a neighborhood at all, but a nine-to-five business district, already empty now that the sun hung low over the Pacific. The only light for blocks, that didn’t come from the street lamps, spilled from the front window of the two-story converted warehouse before him. Every other building was dark.

  What sort of person chose to live like this?

  The image of the cool, professional woman he’d met that morning settled in. While shaken and upset, she’d still managed to portray elegance and success. From the severe twist in her hair, right down to her reptile-skin heels.

  Justin focused on the purse he held in his grasp. Though not as large as some women carried, it was crafted from the same material as those fancy shoes she wore. He’d bet his next paycheck the color was a perfect match to her suit and that the whole ensemble cost more than all the clothes in his closet put together. He wouldn’t have pegged Paige Conroy as the type to live like this. He’d figured her too patrician.

  Justin skimmed his hand across the knotted muscles in his neck. He should have called and told her where she could pick up the purse, instead of showing up on her doorstep. He didn’t normally go for women like her—uptight and out of his league. She probably didn’t even know how to relax, how to let her hair down and have a little fun.

  The thought turned his frustrated breath to a curse. He hadn’t come to get to know her better, or to see if those striking green eyes of hers had lost their haunted look. He was here to work an investigation, to ask questions and get answers. Not to see if her trembling had finally eased. His job brought him to her door, he reminded himself.

  He only wished he believed it.

  The sign affixed to the door read Conroy Photography. Justin rapped his knuckles twice into the center of it. Behind him, the unusual quiet of the street unnerved him. The absence of everyday sounds—like traffic, barking dogs or children at play—tightened already-tense muscles. Made him wish he had strapped his Glock to his side before he’d left his home. The thought disappeared the moment the door swung open.

  Paige Conroy stood in the doorway, framed in the light from the room behind her. Gone was the woman he’d met that morning, a woman who’d exuded a surprising strength and professionalism. In her place stood a woman who unnerved him more.

  Her hair hung down and fell in long, loose curls over her shoulder, nearly to her waist. The fingers of her left hand were tucked in the front pocket of a pair of faded jeans, worn white at the stress points and ripped at the knee. Old, comfortable jeans that fit her like a second skin, drawing his gaze down her long length of legs and to her bare feet. He took his time studying those feet, their red toenails and silver toe ring that he found ridiculously sexy. Enough time that when his gaze returned to her face, he found her frowning at him, her arms crossed before her.

  “Sergeant Harrison, isn’t it? Can I help you Sergeant Harrison?”

  Her tone was ice cold, her stance forbidding. He’d expected this, had been prepared for it even. But he had not been prepared to discover that beneath her outward appearance of strength, in a face washed clean of make-up, was a frailty that had been missing that morning. Dark shadows and small lines of fatigue ringed her eyes.

  The urge to pull her to him and offer comfort surprised him. She was unusually tall for a woman. He stood six-foot-three and even with her feet bare, she nearly looked him in the eye. He liked his women shorter—blonde and petite. Paige Conroy was neither, but the thought of her in his arms, their bodies lining up perfectly, chest-to-chest, pelvis-to-pelvis, warmed his blood.

  “Sergeant?”

  He raised the hand holding her purse before him. “I need to talk to you.”

  She uncrossed her arms and grabbed the doorknob in her right hand. Her eyes iced. Her back stiffened. He recognized her desire to close the door in his face. “Don’t you mean you need to grill me some more?”

  “I understand you’ve had a long day.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “There are some questions I need you to answer.”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. Pushed the door open wider and motioned him in.

  Their shoulders brushed as he stepped past her. She took an automatic step backwards. “I’m not certain I can tell you anything more than I’ve already told you.”

  Justin took a minute to examine his surroundings. Her studio should have felt cold, the immense sea of neutrals and cool contemporary lines, but she’d managed to give the place life. A splash of color here, a large plant there, it all worked together to create a comfortable space. All about him, wood beams, polished to a shine, stood out against walls painted bright white. Across the room, in the farthest corner, a stool sat before a black screen. Lights, some hanging from the ceiling and some attached to poles, surrounded the screen. Photographs, large black and whites lit from beneath, hung strategically about, commanding attention.

  “Sometimes a little time is all that’s needed to recall something new.”

  “I haven’t remembered anything new.”

  Her face was set. Tension radiated out of her like a physical force. She made no move to hide the fact that she didn’t want him there as she skirted around him and crossed the room to the sitting area centered before the large front window.

  He waited until she settled into the corner of the couch before following. “Ms. Conroy, what was your relationship with Detective St. John?”

  “He was my friend.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  Justin bent and placed her purse atop the table before her, alongside a stack of eight-by-tens compiled of tiny photographs. “During the course of our investigation, we have uncovered that you had a relationship with Detective St. John. Would you care to verify that?”

  “Of course I had a relationship with him. As I have already told you, Lee and I were friends.”

  He nodded. And because he couldn’t stand not knowing, he reached down and picked up one of the photo sheets. “Is this your work?”

  Her feet hit the floor and she was off the couch like a shot. Her eyes locked onto his hands. “Please don’t touch that. It has nothing to do with your investigation.”

  “The pictures are so small. What do you use this for?”

  She raised her left hand toward the sheet, then stopped. Her breath released on a sigh. “They’re called proof, or contact sheets. The pictures are so small because essentially it’s nothing more than a copy of the negatives.”