by Julie Miller
She was on her knees, trying to regain her footing and find a target when the blare of long horn joined the attack. The black car shifted course, plowing up a ravine in the grass, tossing up clods of sod and gravel that pinged against her skin.
Porch lights popped on like fireworks going off. The horn kept honking. Since her feet weren’t cooperating, Olivia rolled over onto her bottom and sat up, firing off a shot at the black car as it hopped the curb back into the street and sped away. She put out one taillight before it careened around the corner.
Ignoring the twinge in her arm, she pushed to her hands and knees. She instinctively recoiled from the screech of brakes in the street beside her and the second set of lights shining on her. She managed to stand, but swayed on her feet when she tried to run.
“Olivia!” Two strong arms grabbed her, pulling her against a wall of warmth and strength, trying to steady her. “Are you hurt?”
She knew the deep voice, knew the touch. But she pushed Gabe’s arms away and stumbled back into the street as the black car’s taillight disappeared beyond the houses in the next block. “He got away. That son of a bitch got away. Again.”
“Come on.” Gabe was on his phone, reporting the incident, following right behind her. His hand pressed into the small of her back, guiding her off the street as she pulled out her own phone. “You go back in the house while I move my SUV off the street.”
“Damn you, Marcus Brower.” Ignoring Gabe’s order, Olivia planted her feet on the walkway in front of her porch and punched in a number she remembered far too well.
“Yep?”
“Marcus. Since when did you take up stalking?”
“Liv? What are you talking about? Are you all right?”
“Barely in one piece, no thanks to you. What kind of car do you drive?”
“I don’t. Why do you keep asking that? I bought a red pickup after we split, and I still have that motorcycle we used to cruise on. Mmm. Hold that thought a sec.”
“Excuse me?”
And then the background sounds registered. Soft music. Giggling. Moans. Not one indication of a speeding car or traffic. “Do you need a lift somewhere? I’m kind of busy at the moment.”
She’d interrupted a make-out session. Yeah, he was real heartbroken over losing her. And she wasn’t. Not anymore.
Olivia disconnected the call. All she felt was confusion. Marcus wasn’t driving the black car. So who was following her? Who just tried to kill her? Or tried again, she suspected, thinking back to the fire. Who was the creeper getting in her head and messing with her life?
She clutched her arm to her side and slowly turned, looking around her for answers that wouldn’t come. She recognized each of her neighbors, at their doors, on their porches, inspecting the damage done to their yard. No one was hurt. No one was a threat. She recognized the tall man on his cell phone striding toward her. The tuxedo Gabe wore didn’t make any more sense than the rest of this.
Then she remembered an odd phrase and whispered, “Leave the dead alone.”
“What did you say?” Gabe’s hand was at her back again. Warm. Supportive. A link to the reality just beyond her reach. The black car wasn’t about an old relationship gone wrong. This was about a case. This was about Dani Reese’s murder. “What’s that?” Gabe was answering the dispatcher on his phone. “That’s right. Black Challenger. The last three numbers were 487. I know it’s only a partial, but I’m certain of the make.”
Olivia was cradling her left arm at her side, rubbing her shoulder. Suddenly, the aches in her body lessened. She tipped her face up to his taut features. “You got a plate number?”
Gabe tucked his phone away and nodded. “I gave the description to 9-1-1. I’ve already talked to your partner, Jim. He’s on his way. He’ll take care of the neighbors and securing your place.”
What else had she missed? “When did you call Jim?”
“On my way over. Jim’s your partner. He’s supposed to back you up, isn’t he?” Olivia nodded. Yes. Trusting Jim Parker felt right. “I didn’t know if your brothers or dad would stay on the line once they knew it was me. After my little chat with Leland Asher at the reception tonight, I needed someone to be with you. I didn’t know if I’d get here in time.”
“Do you think that was one of Asher’s men? What kind of mob boss hires a peeping Tom?” She pointed at the window where the perp had hidden in the bushes. “I’ve been alone since dinner. He could have broken in at any time. But he was just...looking.”
“You’re not making me feel any better about what just happened... Ah, hell.” Gabe pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilted her face toward the streetlamp. He pulled the pristine white handkerchief from his jacket pocket and pressed it against her cheek. She winced at the sting on her skin, but he didn’t apologize. “You’ve opened that scrape again.” When she took over holding the compress against her cheek, he dropped his gaze to her gun. “Is that thing secure?”
Olivia reset the safety. “It’s safe.”
He scanned over his shoulder at the neighbors. “You’ve got a lot of curious eyes on you right now. Should we go inside?”
She nodded, but didn’t move.
“Olivia? Come on, love.” That snapped her gaze up to his. He led her into the house and closed and locked the door behind him. She stood in the foyer watching him do the things she should have been doing. He flipped on the porch light and faced her again. “Do you need five minutes before police cars and an ambulance arrive?”
Alone? That was the last thing she wanted right now. Liv—love— He’d said it twice now, and she wasn’t going to argue about the mix-up. “No.” She set her gun down on the credenza beside the door, turned and walked into his chest. He was warm. He was solid. He was as real as a man could get. When his arms folded around her, she finally drew in a deep, calming breath. “I need you to hold me. Just hold me.”
The arm behind her waist hugged her tightly against him. His other hand slid up to cup the cool skin at her nape. “Finally. I wasn’t even sure you knew how worried I was about you.”
Olivia slipped her hands beneath his jacket and turned her undamaged cheek into the pillow of his shoulder, burrowing into his warmth. “I hate it when I don’t have the answers. When I can’t settle my brain, I can’t relax. I have all these pieces to the puzzle, but I can’t make them fit together yet.”
“Can I help?”
She tried to slow her racing thoughts to match the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear. “You are.”
His fingers moved against her skin, massaging the tension there. “Tell me about the pieces that don’t fit.”
“Do you know an E. Zeiss?” Gabe shook his head. “Did Dani’s notes indicate any reason why Ron Kober would hire a private detective?”
“No.”
“I don’t suppose the number thirty-six twenty means anything to you, either.”
The massage at her nape stilled. “Thirty-six twenty?”
“It was on a shred of paper in Kober’s office. He ate the rest of the note just before he...” Wait a second. The deep timbre of Gabe’s tone had changed. Olivia leaned back against his arm and tilted her gaze to his. “You know what it means.”
His nostrils flared with a resolute breath. With his arm at her back, he turned her to escort her into the hallway. “I want you to pack a bag.”
If he had an answer, she needed it. Skipping a step ahead of him, she spun around and parked herself in his path. “Why? Where are we going?”
“I’m not leaving you here by yourself tonight. Even with your partner patrolling around outside, it doesn’t feel safe.” His blue eyes were dark like midnight, the careworn lines etched more deeply beside them. “I lost Dani because I wasn’t paying attention to the details. I wasn’t close enough to help save her.”
That driv
ing need to find answers abated beneath the compassionate tug on her heart. Olivia closed the distance between them, smoothing the lapels of his jacket and fiddling with the bow tie hanging loose from beneath his collar. Gabriel Knight was a confident man, as compulsive as she could be, sure of his goals and unafraid to pursue the truth. Yet there was this chink in his armor, this wounded place inside him where his love for Dani and his guilt over losing her still had a cruel grip on him.
Gabe Knight was a stunner in his tuxedo—sexy and sophisticated and maybe a little bit dangerous—but that wasn’t what prompted Olivia’s carefully worded invitation. “I know things have happened fast between us, and I like the idea of keeping an eye on each other. Maybe...you could stay here.”
He threaded his fingers through her bangs and brushed them gently off her forehead before leaning in to kiss her. She felt the light touch of gratitude and apology before his lips moved over hers in a hard, sensuous kiss that gave her a brief taste of the desire arcing between. But before she could stretch up on tiptoe to answer that driving need, Gabe pulled away. He turned her down the hallway, swatted her rump and scooted her on her way. “Not if you want to find out what thirty-six twenty means. Pack your bag.”
Chapter Eleven
“Thirty-six twenty.” Olivia read the numbers spotlighted on the front of Gabe’s building in downtown Kansas City as he pulled into the parking garage beside the remodeled textile factory that had been turned into condominiums.
Thirty-six twenty. The street address to Gabe’s building.
“Ron Kober hired someone to find out where you live?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I’m in the book. My name is in the newspaper. I’m easy to find.” He parked his SUV and got out, circling around to her side as she climbed down. “But Dani never listed this place as her residence. She had an apartment over in Independence in her name that we were waiting for the lease to run out on. I’m guessing that finding a dead woman’s old address might require a little research.” When Olivia opened the back door to retrieve her overnight bag, Gabe was there first. “I’ve got it.”
“I’m not an invalid.”
He slipped the bag over his shoulder, away from her grasping fingers, and shut the car door. “Look, the caveman in me is screaming to lock you up someplace far away from KC to keep you safe. I’m at least going to carry your damn bag.”
“I guess that is a thing with us now,” she teased. But he wasn’t laughing.
With her cheek bandaged and her left arm back in its sling, Olivia felt a bit like that little girl her father and brothers still wanted to protect. Gabe, at least, hadn’t argued—much—about her taking the time to change into jeans so she could wear a belt to holster her gun before coming here. She could at least concede his concern and give him credit for respecting her need for independence.
As they walked out of the parking garage, she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and fell into step beside him. As soon as she made the contact, he exhaled a deep breath, the tight line of his mouth relaxed and they were a team again. “Why was Kober looking for Dani?” she speculated out loud. “If he was her informant, he’d already have contact information on her, wouldn’t he?”
Gabe shrugged. “I guess we can’t ask him, can we.”
They strolled down the sidewalk, both of their gazes looking up and down and across the street, watching for signs of any other sort of danger lurking in the alleyways and shadows. “I’ll call Zeiss Security first thing in the morning. Although I hate that I have to wait until tomorrow to move forward on the case.”
She nodded to the two tanklike detectives pulling up in front of the building to keep an eye on things tonight. With Jim Parker taking reports from her neighbors and reassuring them that the speeding car and gunshots were a singular incident and that they were no longer in danger, Max and Trent had volunteered to follow them up to the City Market district where Gabe lived.
If nothing else, Olivia felt that her home was safe and that the perp in the black car wouldn’t try anything else tonight. It felt good to have a team of coworkers she could rely on again. Men who made her feel like an equal, not an idiot. Intellectually, she’d known all along that they were supposed to have her back, but it was a special boost to her confidence to truly believe that her evolving relationship with the cold case team meant Jim and Max and Trent, and even Katie Rinaldi and Ginny Rafferty-Taylor, were becoming real friends. They cared that she’d been threatened, and like a family—like her family—they were there for her, without any questions asked, without any games to play, without any inappropriate feelings or harassment to make her second-guess their words or actions.
By the time Gabe had shown her into his spacious loft, Olivia was feeling a lot more like her old self, a lot more like the cop she’d been destined to be from the start. He seemed to be more in his element, too, more of that mature alpha male used to being in control of his domain. The industrial look of the condo suited Gabe, with its exposed brick walls and painted pipes running across the high ceiling. The dark wood floors led into the kitchen, bathroom and living area he showed her. There was no feminine touch anywhere, giving any indication that Danielle Reese had once lived here with him.
But then he led her into a bedroom and opened up the bottom drawer of a dresser where she saw a scrap of lace, a small stuffed bear and pastel-colored items that could only suit a woman’s taste. “Maybe you don’t have to wait until morning to work on the investigation.” He paused for a moment, squatting down to finger the lace trim that looked as though it had come from a wedding veil or gown. “If Kober was coming here to retrieve something he gave Dani, or was looking for a clue to finding the flash drive, it’d be in here.”
Olivia squeezed his shoulder beside her as he walked back through the memories he’d shared with the woman he’d loved and lost. She ignored the pang of jealousy that squeezed her heart. She was smart enough to know she couldn’t compete with a dead woman for Gabe’s affection, or presume to take Danielle’s place. If there was going to be something between her and Gabe, Olivia would forge her own place in his life. Still, she couldn’t help but be a little envious of the commitment Gabe still showed to his late fiancée. If Marcus had possessed even half of Gabe Knight’s integrity and devotion, he wouldn’t have followed his lusty roving eye and given up on their relationship quite so easily.
She pulled away to hug her arm around her middle. Okay, so maybe it did hurt to be this close to Gabe, to want him to love her as deeply and faithfully as he had Dani, to know he was exactly the man her heart needed—and worry that, once again, her love wouldn’t be enough to make the relationship work. She wouldn’t be enough.
Love? Her love? When had that happened? When had she given her heart to cynical Mr. Caveman there?
Olivia swallowed the surprising, fearful truth that suddenly stuck in her throat. She turned away and crossed the room, giving them both the space they needed. “You don’t have to show me her things, Gabe.”
Shaking his head, he pulled the drawer all the way out and carried it to the bed. “Maybe Leland Asher was putting pressure on Kober to ensure no trace of Dani’s story could ever get out.”
Right. Talk about work. Always a much safer topic than her emotions. “Or maybe he needed her story as insurance.” She came back to the foot of the bed to stand beside him. “If he released it to the public or the authorities, Asher would be screwed.”
“And Senator McCoy’s campaign would be over.”
“Kober could have wanted it for blackmail,” she pointed out.
Pulling back the front of his jacket, Gabe propped his hands at his waist. “He’d still have to find it first.”
“And now that he’s dead, no one’s looking.”
“Except for us.” Gabe glanced over the jut of his shoulder at her. “That’s why Asher threatened you. He wants to stop the invest
igation.”
The whole peeping Tom thing still didn’t sit right with her. A man like Leland Asher was an in-your-face kind of threat guy. The man at her window who’d run away from both her gun and the fire didn’t feel like the kind of thug Asher would hire to intimidate her. Setting that conundrum aside for now, Olivia concentrated on the private investigator angle. “And you have no clue where Dani would have hidden that flash drive or any other copy of her story?”
“I’ve checked her jewelry box, her bank box, her desk and locker at the paper. I’ve asked her folks.” With a weary sigh, Gabe scrubbed his hand over the late-night shadow on his cheeks and jaw before gesturing to the drawer. “This is all I’ve kept of her stuff. I sent the rest back to her parents. But they let me pick out a few things.”
Olivia nudged aside the teddy bear to pick up the worn leather bound book beneath it. “Her diary?”
“Those entries are the last thing she ever wrote.” Olivia traced the embossed name on the bottom corner of the front cover, suspecting that Gabe had given the book to Danielle Reese. “She talks about the wedding plans in there, so her mother thought I should have it.”
Heavy sentimental stuff. “No notes on her story, though?”
“She never mentions a name in there except mine.”
Olivia butted her shoulder against his in a sympathetic gesture. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ve moved beyond that part of Dani’s and my story. I just need the truth.” He leaned over to press a lingering kiss to her temple before pulling away and shaking off some unseen burden. “Look at anything in the drawer you want. If you can find something that helps crack this case, I don’t care how personal it is, you won’t hurt my feelings.” He tugged the loose silk tie from beneath his collar and stuffed it into his chest pocket, dismissing himself. “Og needs to change out of this suit.”
“Good,” she teased, turning to watch him as he backed out the door, taking his cue to lighten the mood. “I was tired of you looking prettier than I do.”
